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leerazer's review
4.0
What strikes one the most about these poems has to be their sounds. Chapman cares a great deal about the effect created by the consecutive sounds of the words she chooses to place in her poems. For instance listen to the soothing "s" sounds in this section of her poem "Illumined":
The rhyme of rose/souls and the slant rhyme of bliss/surface add to these lines musicality, to create quite a stunning effect. And this part of the poem "Believer", the "w" and hard "k" sounds creating in my mind a propulsive, irresistable cadence:
This aspect of poetry isn't usually what I deem to be the most interesting to me; it can seem like surface toying when what you want is to get deep in the lake. Emotion and meaningfulness are essential. But her poems also often provide that, addressing alienation and suffering, belief and resurrection. A handful of poems I found remaining opaque to me even after I puzzled over them, which, fair enough, however they much more often revealed themselves.
Bubbles rose like souls
unburdening from selves, bearing tiny spheres
of bliss that broke upon the surface
like sleepers to the touch of consciousness.
The rhyme of rose/souls and the slant rhyme of bliss/surface add to these lines musicality, to create quite a stunning effect. And this part of the poem "Believer", the "w" and hard "k" sounds creating in my mind a propulsive, irresistable cadence:
In fact it seemed a blessing or a talent
sometimes, or its own kind of deeper luck,
the way I walked into each suffering
which was its own intricate world complete
with wild children wrangling to be king
of every broken square of concrete
and market stalls of shrimp kept cool on ice
whose infinitesimal limbs caught light
as if hauled glittering into genesis.
This aspect of poetry isn't usually what I deem to be the most interesting to me; it can seem like surface toying when what you want is to get deep in the lake. Emotion and meaningfulness are essential. But her poems also often provide that, addressing alienation and suffering, belief and resurrection. A handful of poems I found remaining opaque to me even after I puzzled over them, which, fair enough, however they much more often revealed themselves.
vulpasvulpas's review
3.0
this collection has a lot of wonder to it, a silvery testimony to the urban environment and its
moody collage of feelings - tastes, smells, temper.. filled with pinpoint references to the icy brambles of frosty cities :
'Three days in a row
below twenty
below, O Chicago
Purgatorio"
reminding me of minneapolis; and particularly loving the first page reference to the black hills, where i'm from, followed up by my favorite poem from the entire book "Expressway Song" which is a complete veneration of the chrome and concrete realm we have created. a swift and stirring little book.
moody collage of feelings - tastes, smells, temper.. filled with pinpoint references to the icy brambles of frosty cities :
'Three days in a row
below twenty
below, O Chicago
Purgatorio"
reminding me of minneapolis; and particularly loving the first page reference to the black hills, where i'm from, followed up by my favorite poem from the entire book "Expressway Song" which is a complete veneration of the chrome and concrete realm we have created. a swift and stirring little book.
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