Review by Lynda La Rocca
Poetry – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Shape of a Hill poems, prose poems
by Stewart S. Warren
Published in 2005 by Mercury HeartLink
ISBN 1419617362
MY DICTIONARY DEFINES “poetry” in part as ” language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response.”
The poems in Stewart S. Warren’s collection Shape of a Hill do just that: They generate powerful emotional responses to events and situations that will feel achingly familiar to virtually every reader. Warren’s poetry encompasses the universality of life, with all the loves, losses, and longings that divide us, unite us and, ultimately, give us the strength to pull ourselves — and each other — away from the abyss and back into the light.
From the first to the final poem in this 164- page book, Warren muses upon life’s capriciousness and contradictions, simultaneously mourning its brevity while celebrating its beauty. That preoccupation with the ephemeral nature of existence reaches a crescendo in what I think of as his “family” poems, verses that recall childhood games and fears, where an eight- year- old boy learns that
“… sadness is a bicycle ride
down empty summer streets at three in the morning.”
Life unfolds relentlessly in these poems; there’s no turning back as a beloved pet is lost, a father wrestles with “invisible demons,” and the small, sad boy grows into a man who watches as his aging mother
“… strains against
the momentum of the day
to collect her thoughts,
her dignity, her purse.”
Warren’s poems are broad- shouldered and very — masculine is the word that keeps popping into my mind. Yet they’re also surprisingly tender and always intensely personal, as evidenced by “Time to Decide,” in which he stops by the side of a road after accidentally striking a fawn with his vehicle and maintains a vigil with the dying creature.
Here is a poet who is never afraid to cry out, a poet who struggles with, and rages against, the knowledge that, “It all falls and fails ”
Yet turn the page and there is this same indefatigable fighter, now standing in awe of “the moon opening like an egg” or watching, with reverence, “the man handling peaches, his fingers full of light.”
There’s no question that Warren’s are deeply felt poems overflowing with memorable, and occasionally startling, images. Unfortunately, the impact of these images is sometimes diminished by the grammar and spelling errors that litter this text.
Shape of a Hill is published by Warren’s company, Mercury HeartLink, which is described on his website as an enterprise offering “beautiful digital solutions.” As such, this collection suffers from a malady that often afflicts self- published work — the apparent lack of an editor.
Granted, people who know me know that I’m a card- carrying member of the grammar police. I can’t help it; I get really irritated when writers don’t know how or when to use (or not use) hyphens and capital letters, when they fail to differentiate between words like “past” and “passed,” “its” and “it’s” or “who’s” and “whose,” and when they describe a boy as “toe- headed” when they mean “towheaded.” In the case of Shape of a Hill, errors such as these mar and detract from the overall quality of the work.
Now, I know that some people would (and most likely, will) take issue with what certainly could (and most likely, will) be described as nit- picking on my part. So be it. I stand by my conviction that all writers need a second pair of eyes. We need an objective observer to keep us sharp, to keep us from stumbling past mistakes in our own work that we’re too subjective to see. And even then, mistakes are inevitable. But they’re also less frequent.
That said, it’s equally true that errors on the printed page often become insignificant when poetry is spoken. And Warren is a polished and engaging presenter of the spoken word, who will perform at the sixth annual SPARROWS performance poetry festival, to be held in Salida March 2- 5. Don’t miss him; his voice is unforgettable.
