Poetic vingettes for your delight and pleasure
Amazon.com | FIVE STARS
We live in an age with too many sad things. Well, that isn't quite right, isn't it. Every age is full of sad things. But it seems that many generations also have compensating things that bring happiness and joy. We have substituted not hurting and material abundance for happiness and then wonder why we are not happy. One of the things that all men and women have known as a part of happiness since there have been men and women is poetry and we seem to have given up on it. Why, I don't know.
Poetry requires three things that are almost mystically woven into the being of every human. It requires language that is concise, full of meaning (multiple meanings), and is fresh and evocative. While we often read poetry, its roots are in being spoken (and when music, sung). So, the second aspect of poetry is this being rooted in speech that is, for lack of a better word, musical. It has its strong and weak beats, but doesn't have to by strictly rhythmical, it can rhyme, but doesn't have to. It is more about using and organizing the properties of speech so that it contributes to the overall effect of the meaning and imagery. The third property of poetry is that it has to actually be something that is alive in the poet.
Just cranking out dead verse is not poetry, it is verbal sausage making. While different poets will resonate differently with different people, it is the best poets that resonate with the most lives. Too much of what purports to be poetry today is far too self-indulgent and private to resonate with anyone. And that is why so much of poetry is dead, dead, dead.
This book is quite alive. It is full of wonderful poetic vignettes. Some are delightful fantasies that seem a part of our real world, others are stories with surprising event and some have quite surprising endings. There is some verse, but artistically used.
Kat Ricker is a writer of real talent, genuine heart, and the kind of delight in life that lifts the reader. You will feel fresher, lighter, happier, and more alive after reading what she has given us in this book. I can't imagine a better use $10 than getting this book. You will get more delight and pleasure from these pages than you will expect, even after my enthusiastic build-up. Really.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your own mermaid? Or what happened to all those shoe elves now that so much shoe making is automated. What about being finally free from a husband you don't like anymore and being free at last? Or harvesting walnuts with old Michael? Or the life advice of Sister Rita? After taking her vow of poverty all she had in the world was a pin. Even her clothes belonged to the Church. But the pin was hers. She noted, "And when all you have is a pin that pin becomes real important." What about one girls experience at a modeling audition? And I am only describing what is in the first third of the book. There is so much more.
I loved this book and it was a pleasure to read. And re-read.
