A little chapbook to end a year that has been challenging in so many ways. This collection of poems came from the long months of lockdown and silence. The poems are personal and were hard to write. I hope you can connect with them in your own way.
Write to suspension.point@yahoo.com for your free PDF copy.
Review:
I-have-just-read – by Kim M. Russell
Readers’ Picks:
THOUGHT PURGE 
Perhaps one of your best – but all your poetry is of such a high standard, it’s hard to make such a value-judgment. As you know, your poetry always speaks to me deeply. Also, I am always admiring of the poetics. This is no exception.
My initial, overriding reaction was, ‘How sad!’ But it’s a valid and thoughtful sadness; when couched in such excellent poetry, not off-puting. Indeed, completely appropriate to the circumstances. I like your ‘Things about the poems’, explaining their genesis and nature. That’s a prose-poem in itself! I also like the way the book is organised, and the Neruda-inspired ‘Things…’ headings. And the punctuating micro-poems! – exquisite and/or aphoristic.
As always, I enjoy your unique blend of intellect and emotion. I was going to say ‘unique mix’, but in fact it is a blend: aspects of a whole, rather than separate strands joined artificially.
And above all – again, as always – I love the language.
a sodden, inconsolable bass-heavy serenade.
in the thickening dusk / they fade one by one — / reflection, water, heron, I
sorrow preys with yellow owl-eyes,
and so on.
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One of my favourite poems among the many in the collection is
Things Past Present
These are lines written by someone who has experienced those. Those lines flow due to what she has seen. The analogy to the algorithm is a great idea.
Another favourite in the poem is the way it is ended.
Way to go.
More to follow.
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Thanks so much! Glad you liked that poem… I suppose for a generation that was young without internet and mobile phones, something broke in ways that we still struggle to understand.
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I am going back through your book now to comment and reveal where I was most moved. I remember first being impressed by the spaciousness of it–and then as I continued reading I began to see the white space as emptiness, the place where life meets the abyss. And I love this line that first gave me a clue to this: “My silence is in continuous conversation with me” in “Things that did not Fall.” Also “the chance of light fading to love” is startling because I’ve felt that Light is Love. Only lately have I come to learn love is also shadow.
“Things”: A marvelous refrain, in simple contrast with the deep imagery that follows, and Wonderful use of Neruda to lead in. useless . . . passivity. . . yet a sense of a force beyond biological. I love how you turn statements into questions throughout—and sometimes turn sureties into questions.
You keep drawing attention to what a poem is, finding in an unfinished poem a safe space … love that!
And the haiku that “ends” this poem, with knowledge, in my opinion, never ending. I love being a poet with you, wondering if people and God and nature know me through my writing, maybe are the writing. (I’ve come to see myself as a walking trinity–giving up polarities. The trinity that contains me is GOD–EARTH-(inter)ACTIONS.)
In this book, there is always an in between—that little bit of life surrounded by darkness, and in “things lost” spoken of as “the same distance between.” “Things lost” is my favorite poem. I wish I had written it. I love how it emerges again in “Things that Cannot.” Wow!
“how can you calm
the raging ocean
by pointing to the silent shore” WOW!
“Life isn’t
like love that wants you to surrender. It pouts and flirts . . . “
“The night is my mirror” places me as a presence trying to get in the relationship with natural forces, seeing all in “the pathetic fallacy” as an extension of “me”–and then, there’s that Neruda snippet as a frame.
Bravo!
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Thanks so much, Susan. Have always loved how you read a poem, smashing right through the words and into the twilight in which the poem was written. So glad you read this!
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I am really enjoying reading your poems. I truly admire the way you delve deep into emotions and precisely scoop pearls of words that you weave into the jewels of poems.
Frankly,I feel totally unqualified to comment on your great treasures.
Humbly, may I say that it feels like some of your poems are written just for the reader to question, sift and sort through their own emotional state and solace.Your words stir thoughts and memories delicately and deeply, through the present situation and passage of time.
So much is said in so little. The haiku gems are very uplifting in a somber way. My favorites- ‘from then to now—” and ‘ so much of the sky–”
The Qs you ask in your poems are so thought provoking, especially in ‘things that did not fall’ and ‘things I should have known’
I have to admit that some of it is beyond my grasp or present comprehension. I feel one has to read, reread, and reread each word so as to understand and digest the heart and depth of the poem.
The way you explain the dimension of compromise and the sense of togetherness, the way you use the metaphor of the sky in all types of emotions and tone of the day, is so very expressive and meaningful..
“how life walks ahead of me- without me– despite me–” — and the ending ” mid sentence it disappears” really hit home. Such a truthful revelation that we don’t really think about, when we are caught up in life”s happenings or feeling of stagnation.
I truly appreciate your sharing your work and your open expressive writings.
Looking forward to more of your expressions.
Thanks,
Priti
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Thanks so much, Priti. Am glad the poems resonate with you and you enjoyed this chapbook. Clarity comes with new questions and the acceptance that some questions will always remain unanswered. Maybe some of that experience has translated into the poems.
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