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paysonrharris's review
5.0
You can often judge the quality of a book of poems by the first stanza. Is it verbose and filled with platitudes? Or is it filled with tight prose that conveys images and meaning?
Face Down in the Leaves starts with an intro that demonstrated in four lines that I was in good hands:
"Shadows flickering over frozen waves,
The silent sea whose stretch we stand before.
Banks of fog with their gamboling foxfires
Behind, we wash our necks and quit the shore..."
The book does not disappoint. Each poem is beautifully crafted, with each word deliberately chosen and placed. Each image touches my soul, and leaves me yearning to understand more, to read the poems again and again.
This is a beautiful book. I recommend it without reservation.
Disclaimer: I received this book as an advance review copy.
Face Down in the Leaves starts with an intro that demonstrated in four lines that I was in good hands:
"Shadows flickering over frozen waves,
The silent sea whose stretch we stand before.
Banks of fog with their gamboling foxfires
Behind, we wash our necks and quit the shore..."
The book does not disappoint. Each poem is beautifully crafted, with each word deliberately chosen and placed. Each image touches my soul, and leaves me yearning to understand more, to read the poems again and again.
This is a beautiful book. I recommend it without reservation.
Disclaimer: I received this book as an advance review copy.
makyo's review
5.0
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Sometimes, I think that poetry is the art of finding the way to imbue every word with as much meaning as possible so that they are almost too rich to handle and reading them leaves you winded. Dwale accomplishes this handily in its chapbook Face Down in the Leaves.
The poet shows a mastery of language that balances between plain and overwrought, often coming out luscious and evocative. It uses this to wonderful effect in "Dirt Garden" with "[...] I killed them a little, / The crab-grass clumps, datura and nettle. "Time and time I commit these small murders, / To whose benefit?"". The work builds up this garden, and the reader can see the datura flowers and feel the crab-grass clumps; they take on meaning beyond just names of plants.
There are no explicit, themed sections within the collection, but all the same, one can tell that care was taken with the ordering of the works. Some time is spent in that dirt garden. Some time is spent with a lover. A brief time is spent in a complex feeling that's not quite melancholy, not quite antipathy. These themes weave in and out of focus, never so strong as to keep individual poems from shining but still helping to form the collection into coherent work in its own right.
Dwale has brought together some truly outstanding work into one volume that I'm sure I'll be rereading, studying, and dreaming about for a while to come. It was already one of my biggest inspirations, and this has only cemented that fact for me.
Sometimes, I think that poetry is the art of finding the way to imbue every word with as much meaning as possible so that they are almost too rich to handle and reading them leaves you winded. Dwale accomplishes this handily in its chapbook Face Down in the Leaves.
The poet shows a mastery of language that balances between plain and overwrought, often coming out luscious and evocative. It uses this to wonderful effect in "Dirt Garden" with "[...] I killed them a little, / The crab-grass clumps, datura and nettle. "Time and time I commit these small murders, / To whose benefit?"". The work builds up this garden, and the reader can see the datura flowers and feel the crab-grass clumps; they take on meaning beyond just names of plants.
There are no explicit, themed sections within the collection, but all the same, one can tell that care was taken with the ordering of the works. Some time is spent in that dirt garden. Some time is spent with a lover. A brief time is spent in a complex feeling that's not quite melancholy, not quite antipathy. These themes weave in and out of focus, never so strong as to keep individual poems from shining but still helping to form the collection into coherent work in its own right.
Dwale has brought together some truly outstanding work into one volume that I'm sure I'll be rereading, studying, and dreaming about for a while to come. It was already one of my biggest inspirations, and this has only cemented that fact for me.
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