Mirage by Shutao Liao
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Contemporary, Poetry
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

The poet found himself retreating to his own lodge as an observer after long tedious travel, writing down everything across his mind, to reveal a splendor of romantic emotions as well as a profound sense of beauty throughout the words between the lines.

An intimate journey to the kingdom of self salvation.

Change isn’t always easy, but it’s an unavoidable part of being alive.

I enjoyed the repetition of certain themes throughout this collection. For example, the speakers spent a lot of time talking about the circle of life and death and how what might seem to be a catastrophe in one moment can be interpreted very differently if a long term view of the problem is taken instead. Natural disasters were one example of this, and they made me think of how fire can look quite destructive for a prairie or a forest in one particular year but also be critical to the survival of that ecosystem decades or centuries from now. Finding patterns like these made it difficult for me to stop reading. I kept wanting to pick out more examples of what the author was talking about and connect everything together.

There were times when I struggled to understand what the author was trying to say. Poetry can be written in ways that can lead to multiple valid interpretations of the same text, of course, but I did find myself wishing that some of these passages were a little easier to comprehend. The writing style was so detailed that it saddened me to walk away from certain stanzas without fully figuring out what they were trying to share with the audience. If not for my confusion in those moments, I would have happily gone with a higher rating.

The references to the events of 2020 were an interesting surprise. I liked the way Mr. Liao discussed how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected everyone’s lives to this day, from the tragedy of the countless deaths from this disease to the social isolation that all of us survivors have dealt with while trying to slow the spread of the virus. The poem after this one described the author washing his dusty soul for reasons I’ll leave other readers to discover for themselves, and I thought it was a pleasant way to wrap up a reference to something that is still such a major portion of everyone’s lives.

Mirage made me yearn for spring and the beginning of the next cycle of the seasons.

Hearts and Spears by Somto Jefferson Uwazie
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Poetry, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A breathtaking poetry collection that holds political leaders to account, appreciates women and draws readers into nature’s bosom with masterfully woven words.

Divided into four sections: Anger & grief, Women, Nature and Happiness, and spiced with wise quotes and beautiful sketches, Hearts and Spears, encompasses a wide range of human emotions. It awakens readers to the steady deterioration of our standard of living and the lackadaisical attitude of those in power towards topical issues like climate change and unending military interventions. In the second section, the life experiences and triumphs of women are fully appreciated. The third section, Nature, sings effervescent praise to the most revered African wildlife that now stand on the verge of extinction. The last section, Happiness, is filled with joyous poems that will gladden the hearts of readers and lighten their mood.

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This was the first poetry collection I’ve read that mentioned the Covid-19 pandemic. Like everyone else on Earth, the author has spent well over a year now living with uncertainty and fear. Those emotions spilled out onto the page as he described what it felt like to read updates on this pandemic and the often-evolving advice on how to reduce one’s chances of getting sick. What really made his poetry special was how he responded to this pandemic once the first few months of it had passed by and he had a chance to immortalize his experiences. No, I can’t go into specifics here. It’s best if every reader can be surprised by the twists and turns in his journey for themselves, especially later on once he began to make references to his previous points . What I can say is that his perspective was simultaneously a unique look into how his mind worked and a chance to think about the many ways in which all of our responses to this disease have often overlapped.

While I liked the way everything was sorted out into four different sections by theme, the topics themselves were so different from each other that I did briefly wonder why the author decided to include them all in the same collection. Sometimes it felt a little odd to me to leap from one subject to the next like that. It was like reading four different books that weren’t quite similar enough to each other to be discussed in the same conversation. Had they either been separated or included poems that better wove all of the themes together, I would have felt comfortable giving this a higher rating.

Some of the best poems in my opinion were the ones that talked about how humans react to people who don’t look, think, or act the way they do. This ran the gamut from ideological differences to racial ones, and even that was only scratching the surface of the multitude of topics he covered. I often found myself nodding along with the author’s thoughts on how people should treat folks they don’t like or understand, especially when that feeling between the conflicting groups was mutual. Other passages he wrote made me wish I could sit down with him and dissect them with him. Body language and tone of voice matter just as much when it comes to interpretation, and I would have loved to hear and see how he’d make these poems come to life in person. This is definitely something that should be savored as one reads it.

Hearts and Spears was a thought-provoking collection I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys free verse.