The following are excerpts from book reviews submitted by undergraduate students in the Journal Editing class that was offered by the Department of English at Caldwell University in the Fall 2019 semester in conjunction with the submission period for Presence 2020. The books reviewed below represent the students' choices from among the books reviewed by professionals in Presence 2020. Poets reviewed are: William Baer, Susan Baller-Shepard, David Craig, Barbara Crooker, Père Jacques de Foïard-Brown with Marilyn Nelson, D. G. Geis, Maria Giura, Lorraine Healy, Philip C. Kolin, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Tim J. Myers, Christine Valters Paintner, Martha Silano, and Sheryl St. Germain.
A Baobab tree, as Père Jacques de Foïard-Brown recalls from his experience living inside of one, holds great wisdom. Spanning more than a thousand years' time, it awaits to quench the thirst of its next curious visitor. Père Jacques and Marilyn Nelson team up after an extensive friendship of 53 years to create a story for all generations to enjoy on the beauty of wisdom and the magic found in silence from the eyes of Père Jacques's fictionalized character, Abba Jacob. . . . Abba Jacob tells the story of the Baobab tree and the valuable lessons he learned to a group of children who are sitting around him, listening intently. The children within the story view the language of silence as a sort of magic they wish to attain, as Abba Jacob narrates the beauty found within the nature of silence, using descriptive language and the imagery of exotic animals.
Victoria Peerson
A characteristic of Martha Silano’s Gravity Assist that I found enjoyable, yet reflective, is her ability to joke with the reader. In “Dear Absolute Certainty,” she plays with humor to explore our lack of sensibility: “2a + 2b, for certain beyond unquestionable, / for the stupefying quiz at unit’s end. / / You call it a root; I’ll call it a clothesline,” leading me as the reader to question how regularly do I give credit to math in my everyday life. As Silano demonstrates, . . . after we are tested in math, we often do not reflect on how we are going to use it again. Maybe what she is arguing for is education reform, where schools will teach math from the perspective of its application in our world. . . . As abstract as “gravity” is she wants to ground the reader.
Elizabeth Weissenberger
In Every Tongue Confess, David Craig’s poems show Christ as being both a part of humanity, while still maintaining His full divinity. Christ’s humanity validates the physical world, making it possible for Christ to work through it. In “The Lords of Misprision,” Jesus’s grace reaches us through other humans, in this case, through the famous jazz musician, Charlie Parker:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It’s jazz
that omits no man, or woman, no feathered dispatch.
Charlie Parker! Now there was a real Catholic!
I saw him once in K.C., in the farthest back pew.
He was always playing his horn, even when he wasn’t.
I know he had Jesus there, on his sacred tongue,
because I could hear Him dancing—on hot afternoons.
Katherine Kopec
In The Small Door of Your Death, poet, Sheryl St. Germain, allows readers to enter through the door that contains a glimpse into the life of addiction and the consequences that arise from it. Loss, grief, confusion, and regret are all a part of the stages of coming to terms with the unbearable, in St. Germain’s fifth book of poems, which is in memoriam of her son, Gray St. Germain Gideon. She allows herself to become vulnerable as her own feelings are poured into these poems, taking a topic that is avoided at every dinner table and reminding readers of the unfortunate reality that every life has an end, even a son’s.
St. Germain tackles both the son’s and the mother’s struggle with how to cope with feelings of hopelessness. However, she also looks at the many questions that arise after death too. In her 7-lyric series collectively titled “Versions of Heaven,” the mother questions the type of afterlife the soul will enter into with the first version being a happy memory of the early nineties when the son was younger. The mother was joyous, blasting music and imagining a time when there was no stress in the world. In her fourth version of heaven, she envisions herself at a computer, back when her son sent her a video of his band playing, enjoying the music. Each version of heaven seems to be defined by music as a source of happiness. Yet, the various versions of heaven also show readers how no one really knows where the soul ends up and what the soul experiences in the afterlife, but one can imagine. Though, one thing is for sure, as she remarks in the poem “Viewing the Body,” and that is, “Never again this body, never this vessel through which I knew you.” No longer will her son be recognizable in his earthly body—for that has perished. Only the memories of him will be left behind.
Sabrina Micciche
Susan Baller-Shepard uses extreme scenarios and a variety of religious beliefs from around the world to move her readers to really “dig deep” in their own faith and view toward God. Following God and having faith will not always be easy and make sense, but it seems it will always be worth it long term.
Michael Marta
D. G. Geis holds a graduate degree in philosophy, and his collection, Praise Music, contains poems about many different topics viewed through the lenses of philosophy and religion. Simple titles, such as “Original Sin,” “Marriage,” “Heaven,” “Paradise,” “Psalm 152,” “Job’s Children,” “The Prodigal,” and “School of Life” belie the complexity of his thought. The poem “Marriage” begins with views of marriage from different thinkers, such as Montaigne, Socrates and Luther, followed by an imaginative view of Adam and Eve engaging in sex that elicits a response from the whole of creation and ends with the following definition of marriage: “two humans / thrown together by chance / / are called spouses. Or a flock of ravens, / / an unkindness.”
Sarim Hussain
William Baer’s Formal Salutations: New and Selected Poems contains a wide range of emotions. At one point, readers feel pure delight and happiness. Later on, we go through very unsettling emotions that make us uncomfortable with our assumptions about reality and about our own identity. In “The Stand-In,” which is one of the “new” poems in the collection, the persona talks about being a stand-in in life rather than playing the star role:
But unlike other stand-ins, I’m satisfied
and never really covet the leading role,
besides, I know it’s not for me to decide,
he’s he, I’m me, and it’s out of my control.
But, sometimes, I wonder what the others see
and wonder if he’s just standing-in for me.
The person speaking feels as though he is just playing the role of the leader for others. He’s being the person he is supposed to be, not necessarily the person he wants to be. His reflections make us question ourselves and reflect on where we are standing. It makes us wonder whether or not we are standing where we want to be in life. It makes us second guess what we are doing. We feel uncomfortable.
Nisly Baez
Throughout Barbara Crooker’s eighth book of poems, The Book of Kells, she utilizes the mystical nature of Ireland as well as the ancient Book of Kells to allow readers to travel to a mindset where they can see the relationship of the Irish to their natural surroundings and their culture. Additionally, she carefully shows a partnership between humor and God that evokes serious contemplation and helps readers understand a connection between Ireland, the written illuminated word and God.
Billy Burns
In Dreaming of Stones, Christine Valters Paintner writes of time, memories, wishes that could happen if she kept wishing, interesting places, every form of love possible and religion. Her poetry is very focused on nature, but also on human behavior and the depths of the human mind. While she stops to focus in slow motion on her surroundings, she also allows her readers to visualize her thought process. In “St. Sourney’s Well,” the persona visits a location where people come to say a “prayer for healing” or simply to ask “’How long, O God?’” She describes the natural scene so that the reader feels present in that very moment and also feels God’s presence, not in “pronouncements in reply” to human prayer or in “choruses of Alleluia,” but in
Only moss and streams and birdsong,
only knowing that life still
burgeons here on the edges of
our own landscapes of loss.
Carissa De Franco
In Maria Giura's What My Father Taught Me, the titles of the poems themselves take us through her life, starting from when she was a child, then her teenage years—when she had what seems to be an identity crisis—and then taking us to when faith became a massive part of her life today. In the poem "Cross," she recognizes her need to choose faith in her life:
. . . . . the gold cross I wore for my baptism
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I put it on in high school,
took it off in college,
then put it on again ten years later
for my niece's christening,
promising to do better.
Another poem, "Tyler, I'm sorry," states:
Tyler, I'm sorry
your mom picked me
to be your godmother,
this unmarried aunt
with no children of her own
who looks to you
like a son she didn't have.
These two poems worked hand in hand, in my opinion. When she saw that she was becoming a role model for her nieces and nephews, she decided to do better, not only for her niece and nephew, but for herself too.
Justine Mohammed
The odes in Lorraine Healy’s Mostly Luck have a variety of addressees: the various months of the year; animals, such as goats, cows, even a coyote skull; and food—both growing in the garden, such as garlic and peaches, or cooked in the kitchen (butterscotch pudding)—all with a view toward praising the particular virtues of her adopted Pacific Northwest. In “Ode to Snow,” she writes:
In other places, I know, you
are serious, ruthless combatant.
But here you come armed with nothing
but a frilly nightgown, all tiptoe
and lace, shy maiden aunt
who’ll only stay a day or two, if it’s
no trouble.
Brittany Patten
In Memoria, Orlando Ricardo Menes recounts coming-of-age poems that delve into Hispanic culture as well as critique the “machismo” often found in abundance throughout the culture. As a part of Hispanic culture myself, I find Menes’s poetry to be realistic poetry that beautifully illustrates a culture set heavily in tradition, family and the “macho” man. In “Macho,” his mother shames him “for being timid, emotional.” In “Judo,” his father takes him to a karate studio because “Judo will make [him] a man.” With influences of both popular culture and Hispanic tradition weighing down on him, Menes perseveres through the process of growing up.
Bianca Caruso
In Reaching Forever, Philip C. Kolin creates situations in which many biblical characters can feel Christ’s love, reminding us how God’s love came to be felt by humans in the person of Christ but also through all human love. In “Samaria,” the adulterous woman at the well
. . . . . . . . . . . . was baggaged with so many husbands
she forgot the taste of their touch.
But at the interview of her life, she drew
water from Jacob’s well slaking her thirst
by satisfying His.
And in “Joseph’s Transitus,” Joseph experiences the comfort of his loving wife and child after a day of labor in the carpenter’s shop:
Now caressing his grainy brow
the wife of his spirit
kisses him
and then the son he taught to
sing the Psalms.
Megan Amendola
Tim J. Myers’s Down in the White of the Tree reminds me of the Book of Psalms because the poems transport readers to places we do not know we wanted to go. But once we are there, we travel willingly to these places where words and beauty can take us when we fall into the unknown known Myers creates. I invite readers to be transported and refreshed.
Gary Striggles, Jr.