Giovanni Singleton

Overall, this collection is the work of a poet with wide influences, who seems to be struggling among them. I imagine her swimming in rough seas, looking for something (voice after voice) to hold on to. In that way it’s highly intimate and revealing, giving rise to a kind of intense vulnerability that is almost entrancing. The experiments sometimes work, and sometimes really don’t. The presentation of the poem “exodus” reproduced as a page scan with the Arabic alphabet running down show more the left side does not do enough to mitigate phrases like “astral streams of / inky wings / fluttering skyward / / echoes of ancient chants / rise from the wooden cage / in my throat”. Words like “astral” and images of “ancient chants” rising are so exhausted by overuse that I’m not sure any presentation or context could save them from their insipidness.

Ultimately, I’m not the right reader for this book. I can see a lot of poetic beautiful, some really stunning lines and phrases and ideas, drowning in the new-age sea of mysticism. Others may appreciate much more this kind of work.

[Read the whole review: http://alluringlyshort.com/2012/11/20/ ] show less