Review: Gorgeously illustrated volume
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 4, 2013
An intriguing prelude offers many philosophical questions at the start of this short poetry collection, while the poems that follow explore such varied themes as faith, nature, music and family life. Each page is beautifully presented with vibrant illustrations, best viewed in color, all pleasingly well-chosen for the poems appearing opposite them. The poems are all of similar length and style, with simple rhythms, slightly didactic prose, and determined rhymes, but the whole is a pleasing book where illustrations and words combine into something greater than words alone.An odd mix of poetic, philosophic and scientific prose can be seen in the poem Humans which begins: "The life in something as fundamental as a call / To survive, having its own organelles..." The poem continues with a look at evolution, "God's simulacrum," and the pinnacle of existence. On a later page, "Following one's bliss," one is empowered "to explore" in Music, while the zephyr's wind reminds "Everything becomes as it used to preexist." Flowers are described beautifully as "The jewelry of the mother earth..." and Water as "the manifestation of the spirit." A flock of birds, a soaring eagle, a sky of blue and clouds give way to fire and smoke as the poems progress, from mankind all the way to the stars, then to the abstractions of shape and paradox.Strongest in its gorgeously rendered images, and most intriguing in its lexicon where words from earlier poems are expanded and explained, this short poetry book may or may not answer the questions of the prologue, but it certainly pleases the eye.Disclosure: I received a free ecopy of this book from the author with a request for my honest review.