• Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Facebook Twitter Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home»Reviews»Book Reviews»Prisms Particles, and Refractions by Carol Smallwood

Prisms Particles, and Refractions by Carol Smallwood

0
By Mom Egg Review on November 13, 2017 Book Reviews

Review by Judith Skillman

Carol Smallwood’s new collection, Prisms Particles, and Refractions, is at once playful and serious. Her work in this volume ranges from extremely concise poems such as “On Days of Slow Rain” where the speaker becomes “a child again / longing to read / darkened tree bark/like Braille” (53) to the four-page oeuvre written in journal form, “A Late Summer Diary.” The fact that these two poems are neighbors makes the transition between short and long more emphatic, and creates echoes and resonances.

As Smallwood deftly moves through a variety of content and subject matter, the reader gets a sense of an unpredictable world, despite the anchor of a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. Facts are posited, yet not accepted as givens. For instance, in “We See,” the persona examines exactly how we do see and absorb light, and questions knowledge imparted during college years. Here, the title becomes the first line: “We See / with rods and cones I learned / in college—it may not be true/today…” (13). As this poem deepens, mirrors, faces, and sacrifice come into play, as well as the automatic adjustment made by the retina from upside down to right side up. This piece is emblematic of Smallwood’s gift—focused examinations that lead to “aha” moments for both writer and reader.

The poems in this book have been published in many journals. Clearly the art of poetry is one Ms. Smallwood has lived and learned. Her forms range from cinquain to villanelle to sestina; she switches from formal to free verse with ease. The myriad references and allusions in these poems draw from philosophy, psychology, physics, metaphysics, history, and literature.

“A Prufrock Measurement” (74) employs playfulness and formal rhyme in order to merge two vastly different subjects—contemporary fast food proliferation with the persona of Eliot’s Prufrock. This willingness to draw from disparate sources creates a prismatic effect: varied and brilliant. In the introduction, Smallwood states her intention to present poems “aimed at capturing…aspects of light…and light as metaphor.” It is this reviewer’s sense that she has succeeded.

Prisms Particles, and Refractions
by Carol Smallwood
Finishing Line Press, 2017, $18.99 [paper] ISNB 978-1635342338
85 pp.


Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com

 

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleMyth of Motherhood Poetics by Jennifer Givhan
Next Article Gloved Against Blood by Cindy Veach

Comments are closed.

June 7, 2023

Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Tranquility, by Anna Laura Reeve

June 7, 2023

Raven King – Poems by Fox Henry Frazer

June 7, 2023

Wind & Children by Linda Scheller

June 7, 2023

Mother Country by Jacinda Townsend

May 31, 2023

MER 21 Online Launch Reading

May 31, 2023

Poem of the Month – June

May 19, 2023

MER 21 Launch Reading – Sunday May 21 in NYC

May 10, 2023

Poem of the Month – May 2023 (2)

May 10, 2023

Poem of the Month – May 2023 (1)

May 10, 2023

Jennifer Georgescu – Art

Copyright © 2022 MER and Mom Egg Review
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.