One Pulse: Cradle to Grave

One Pulse: Cradle 2 Grave by Tetiana Aleksina

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***
-- Review at request of the author --

This is a book of poetry and I have to confess that my knowledge of poetry is nil. In general it’s something I stay far away from so my ability to review this book is particularly limited. That said I’ll touch upon a few things that I enjoyed and some that I didn’t.

First, full disclosure: When I was in high school and university I wrote a LOT of poetry and, over time, I came to understand just how easy it was for me to write some really bad poetry that fosters the illusion of being deep and insightful when, in fact, it was merely pretentious self-indulgence. Once I figured that out I decided that for me, poetry was best left to other people. So I’m rating this book as a three because I don’t have a clue how to analyze it. It may be brilliant and it may be garbage. I figure it’s probably in between so a three makes sense.

The blurb suggests that this is a poetry battle on themes of life, love and death. I’m not too keen on the death part. I’ve come to that stage in life where Death keeps his spare scythe in my broom closet so this is a theme that’s becoming a little too real with every passing day. Still, for those still sufficiently young to regard the subject strictly in the abstract, I think they might enjoy the poetry.

My favourite poem in the collection was Lines. It is doggerel plain and simple and doggerel is something to which I can relate. Sometimes it has meaning and sometimes not so much; but it is usually irreverent and lively. True, in this case the poet seems to allude to some dark feelings but I can ignore that. There are two, four-line stanzas with a nice rhythm. That’s enough.

I’m not good with meanings but I rather like the sound of poetry and I read these poems with that in mind. As a result, a poem like Phronesis was enjoyable but slightly missed the mark. The last line is ‘Look up! Swallow keys…’ Both receive one beat so there are two half beats followed by a triplet and every time I read it I found myself reading ‘Lock up! And swallow keys…’ The two half beats followed by the triplet may add to the dramatic impact – I don’t know about that - but I don’t like it. For me the rhythm becomes too choppy.

I quite enjoyed Headlanded but once again, there was a break in the rhythm that I found disconcerting. When I read the line, ‘She forgets own name’, I think I automatically inserted the word ‘her’ before ‘own’. For me, the extra syllable smoothes the rhythm and without it the line is too rough. But that’s just me. Other readers may quite like it and it should be noted that my ear for rhythm is probably archaic.

Succumbed was a poem I didn’t like because the images seemed contrived. ‘Vermicelli red’, ‘charnel frame’ – is the poet suggesting that this is the scene of a homicide? If so then maybe it works but frankly I didn’t receive that overall impression.

Zion’s lullaby I found much too choppy for my taste.

I did appreciate some self-deprecating humour in ‘gustave doré’s divine comedy’. Also this poem had a really nice cadence. Culling was another poem I quite enjoyed. It had a nice brave tone to it.

In general, I think this book is worth a look by those readers who are sufficiently young to ‘get’ modern poetry. It may not be quite my thing, but I’m still pretty much back at Robert Service and Edgar Allen Poe so my taste is far from representative. I’m cannot claim to fully understand the work – or even come close to understanding it for that matter; but I think the authors have provided something pleasant to read on a rainy afternoon. Also I really enjoyed the drawings and I think other people will like them as well.



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