Only More So - Salmon Poetry Book | Contemporary Poetry Collection for Literature Lovers | Perfect for Book Clubs & Poetry Readings

I highly recommend this book. The poems are spoken from the lives of many characters, but there is a voice that sews them together, wielding a needle of detailed observation and a thread of painful yet hopeful existence. The voice is one that experiences violence and powerlessness in families and personal relationships, at work, and in absurd wars and genocides, but continues speaking in order to survive, even if all that can be said is to ask for the right words, or to keep breathing until the words come back. Without stereotype, the voice is mostly feminine, coping with a world that is mostly--brokenly--masculine in the assertion of power hiding its own fear of powerlessness. One joy of these poems is that they choose to love, or at least to wonder in empathy, not to hate, even in the face of incomprehensible hatred. Some of them serve as celebrations of specific persons' lives and specific elements of culture lost among the debris of events. These poems struggle with the dissonance of broken promises, between the fault of the betrayer and the self-doubt of the betrayed for believing the promise, somehow still believing the promise after the breach, wondering if it's simply the world's fault for being so fragmented, still hoping for a new spring and a new generation. To a student of religious themes in Western literature, the ideas of original sin and faith in redemption will be discernable, but they are quiet, not in-your-face messages that might put off heretics and skeptics like me. The language is lyrical and flowing, delightful to read aloud for the sound even where the images are jarring and the truth disturbing. This is an unflinching but life-affirming book that will stay with me.