Category: Book Review

By Nakada Wilson and Guests

Girl Poems, by Nakada Wilson and Guests, offers an intriguing collection of poetry. The book provides a platform for voices rarely heard in mass-marketed books. Ms. Wilson, and her guest writers, do not share a unified view, but they do share a perspective. That perspective reflects the experience of being female. This is startling in a literary universe where the default gender is male.

The concerns of Ms. Wilsonare are not limited to gender issues. These poems are about addiction, love and compulsion. One poem, Sullen Secrets, for example, deals with “cutting”, a compulsion to self-harm. While articles abound in medical literature about this syndrome, in Ms. Wilson’s poem, “cutting” is not a syndrome–it is a profoundly personal experience. There are no excuses or explanations for the behavior, but readers are given insight into how it feels to be caught up in the cycle of this act.

Females and males are not alike. Perhaps, in many ways, they are born the same, but this changes over time. One thing that struck me about the poems was the mention of mirrors and the focus on appearance. This is not an expression of vanity, but of burden, and it is distinct from what is traditionally found in poems authored by males. In Christa, for example, Ms. Wilson writes,

A hot 16

Body tight, morals loose

Vitamins and Four Lokos-

Breakfast.

No need for much else

There is a place for this voice in literature. Ms. Wilson is articulate and expressive (as are her guest authors). Good poetry enhances understanding viscerally. Ms. Wilson does this very well. I enthusiastically recommend her book, Girl Poems.

A. G. Moore

By Marilyn Goldsmith

This is a slight volume but there is nothing slight about the poems within. A rare wisdom and skill are on display here. Marilyn Goldsmith, who passed away on April 6, 2014, was well known in the Long Island, New York poetry community. Her work was published in periodicals and anthologies, and was also recognized by local arts groups with several awards. Her best poems demonstrate why this was so.

I first read There Is a Special Place a couple of years ago and keep waiting to hear that Ms. Goldsmith had been ‘discovered’. Her work is brilliant. One of her poems, “Clothesline Communication” (published in the South Dakota Mail), for example, is quintessential Americana. “Clotheslines tell a story in small towns,” Ms. Goldsmith writes. And so they do. Ms. Goldsmith holds up a mirror to this simple rural ritual and imbues the reflection with insight that is nothing short of genius.

Another poem, “Afghanistan Pantoum” (published in the South Dakota Magazine), sears in four arresting stanzas. It speaks of a boy “Sent from prairies sown with grain” to “Cave-pocked mountainous terrain”, a boy who “Smells death on every passing breeze”.  Ms. Goldsmith is a wordsmith, but not the showy sort. There is nothing ostentatious in her work. There is instead an exquisite efficiency in the use of language and a reverent respect for form.

I don’t know if Marilyn Goldsmith will be ‘discovered’ by a large audience. However, I recommend that those who read this review make it a point to discover her on their own.