Review by Lynda La Rocca
Poetry – September 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Weight of Dusk: Poems
by Stewart S. Warren
Published in 2007 by Mercury HeartLink
ISBN: 1-4196-6933-8
That Curve
Poems by Danny Rosen
Published in 2006 by Western Sky Press
ISBN-10 1-4243-0329-X
OF COURSE, the best poetry entertains and inspires, makes us think and increases our understanding. Sometimes it even does all that while also giving us a glimpse into the poet’s soul. This “personal” or “confessional” style of poetry reveals, however obliquely, the writer’s hopes, fears, dreams, regrets, and desires. It allows the reader to walk in the poet’s shoes and view the world through the poet’s eyes. When this kind of poetry is good, it’s unforgettable.
And Stewart Warren and Danny Rosen are damn good. Those who have attended Sparrows, Colorado’s annual performance poetry festival held in Salida, will undoubtedly remember Warren and Rosen as workshop presenters and long-standing performers who are both known for their magnetic and engaging stage presence. On the page, their words are no less powerful.
The 18 poems in Rosen’s chapbook-size first collection chronicle a boy’s meandering path to manhood. It’s a sometimes irreverent journey that winds through the food-filled, cave-like kitchen of a doting grandmother who is not above bribing a skinny grandson to get him to eat, and stops at “The Wall” where, against the background of a sermon extolling “The wonders of Judaism,” horny adolescents quietly discuss the wonders of Jewish girls and a shared desire “to feel their Jewish breasts.” It detours through grungy diners and airport concourses, and on to the tropics, the American West, and Africa, where God suddenly appears:
“. . . walking
through the shadow of a quiver tree,
out across the gravel plain.
Walking on one leg with one arm and one eye
that can still find the road ahead.”
Along the way, this poet falls in love and struggles with loss. He traces the patterns of time in fossils, rocks, stars, and “that curve” where a lover’s hips begin. He finds hope in planet Earth, a “tough old ballerina” that spins on despite, well, everything. And through it all, he scribbles poems in longhand:
“… writing with this pencil.
I’ll take a pencil over a pen anytime.
That wood in my hand.
That grinding lead late at night….”
Like Rosen, Warren is also on a journey. But his journey focuses on that bittersweet time of upending one’s life, when each traveler is simultaneously drawn backward by memory yet forward in search of answers, a better way– or simply a moment’s peace.
Few poets “do” longing and yearning like Warren. And in The Weight of Dusk, his 66-page second collection, Warren again displays his ability to capture the dizzying array of emotions that accompany change, be it geographical, relational, or intrinsic.
In Salt of the Earth: Farewell letter to the San Luis Valley, Warren, who lived in Del Norte for several years, says good-bye to small-town stores, street lights, and sidewalks, and gives up the “familiar ownership” of the valley’s “notorious winds” that rip his clothes from the line, leaving him “driving an hour east to retrieve them.” He expresses gratitude and regret and acknowledges that in this place:
“. . . I have learned what not to do–
and will surely do it again.”
When he isn’t learning, he’s philosophizing, as in these lines from Promiscuity of Breath:
“My religion is optimism
driven by abject failure,
and the good fortune
of having moments of almost
complete forgetfulness.”
Or he’s dreaming, as in Night Funeral:
“. . . of curling up in a coffin
being laid, as they say, to rest.”
Whether remembering himself as a small boy waiting in the car while a parent makes the regular run to a liquor store, recounting a visit to a spiritualist who talks about the lost brother described in another heartbreaking poem as “a straw doll blown sideways/by a gust of lead,” or describing the pain and loneliness of a recent divorce, Warren’s voice is always poignant, strong, and true.
Warren and Rosen are not afraid to reveal themselves through their poetry. And in doing so, they give their readers a great gift– the gift of themselves.
The Weight of Dusk is available from www.heartlink.com
That Curve is available from Danny Rosen, 1391 19 Road, Fruita, CO 81521, westskydan@yahoo.com
