Review: Juxtapositions in Rich Imagery
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 18, 2012
Stella Link's gift in poetry is seeing the ordinary in an extraordinary way. For example, her "Contagious Seclusion" captures the ambivalence and angst that can accompany the simple act of being totally, still-ly alone that strangely melds with a protective exhilaration that hovers. We've all been there.Sometimes her sweep is a gripping one, then at others she comes with a playfulness that wafts across her deft lines, words creating juxtapositions in rich imagery that seem odd, incongruous and yet fly. See what I mean in her "Heat Lightning:"A feast of the imagination, smallbodies of apocalypticstructure,storming and marching like armiesin a midnight sea,guns popping like machine guns.Her poem "Photographic Memory of Grandview Drive" is his rendition of a breathtaking drive on a high hill lined by magnificent houses, an opulent display of wealth at every turn, a fragment of memory dressed up and shining a dim light from his growing-up years:Silhouettes framed in doll houses,burying themselves incomforts unknown, cars swiveldown the twisting road inglimpse of luxurious entrapment.The words unheard rattlingthrough the living, unwinding caravan ofslipping wishes.Then hear the uplifting in this poem titled "Seamstress Blues:"A revolving door journey of a jacketthat protects,insulates, and belts the wearer inan energy of warmth,Building piece after piece.A construction of interwovensoftness,I sew to feel the accomplishment,the birth of fragment from rags togarments.Feel the feeling of this sampling. Only the subjects are ordinary; not the writing.