TRUTHS AS IMAGINED MEMORIES

  Review by Shelby Stephenson of Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us written by Stephen E. Smith (Kelsay Books, 502 South 1040 East, A-119, American Fork, Utah 84003:  Kelsaybooks.com)

     These are poems, for one thing, about the “there” – there!

     Beguiled by the Frailties of Those Who Precede Us:  the title tells all, if it could, for Stephen E. Smith shares the joy of family, father and mother, a son, and graves popular as Mortality’s song that others will come along, even after “released on bond.” 

     What mortal words bring to knowing and not-knowing brim in these poems.  See “Stepping Out of Poetry.”  Stephen’s father was a boxer: the poem deals with many subjects, the main one, I think, racial prejudice:  the conviction of Jack Johnson “by an all-white jury of violating the Mann Act—transporting a woman (in this case his wife) across state lines for immoral purposes—and he was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.”  Stephen presents his father pondering Humanity. The color-line dominates, still does—in our lives and in American poetry.

     Loiter and laugh as wakening comes again:  “Last July” shows the natural Unnatural as a child cries as his father leaves him for a podium to read poetry to an audience, the child, now grown, moving us to the window-light.

     I did that this morning:  opened the blinds.  The world said, Hello!!

     This book does too, gives light–big time. 

     Stephen E Smith lives in Southern Pines, North Carolina.  His reviews and essays are featured in PineStraw, Walter, and O. Henry Magazine. The book is available here from Kelsay Press.