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51 Poems
A master of meter and rhyme, with a rare ability to render formal poetry at once intriguing and accessible for the contemporary reader, Marcus Bales has been producing masterful work at a brisk pace and giving it away via social media. This is his first book. One hopes for more.
- GenresPoetry
100 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 5, 2018
This is poetry as it is meant to be: evocative and word-for-word memorable. Fair disclosure: I am an online friend of Marcus Bales - and I am so because his poetry is evocative, memorable, witty... and it all rhymes and scans in the most natural and elegant way.
His collection of 51 Poems contains sections with very different moods. The first ones recapture childhood and wartime experiences and then give way to my personal favorites, a series of poems of love that in one way or another is unattained, incomplete: Pre-Flight, "I called goodbye. By then she couldn't hear.//I pulled the chocks away, and she was gone." Broken Sunlight "streaming down his face." Have You Forgotten "it all, and all so soon?" Me and the Moon. Dancing with Abandon. And Precipice: "and knowing everybody knows//I'm dancing on a cliff edge, unaware//of where the precipice gives way to air."
Others of his poems are portraits of very diverse people, political or social commentary, and (most memorably) flawless parodies of Keats, Poe, W.S. Gilbert, Auden, Shakespeare, Kipling among others. It is in the parodies that he shows the greatest diversity of rhyme and meter, because his ear catches the rhythm of a patter song as easily as iambic pentameters.
Online you will find him knocking out sarcastic little quatrains almost daily, and appearing as a standard contributor in The Rotary Dial. (Two that are too recent to be in this collection are "The Love Song of Donald J. Prufrock" and his baseball sonnet: "On First, Looking into Chapman's Homer".) Come for the wit, stay for the human insights, and you will be rewarded with memorable wordplay and verbal dexterity.
His collection of 51 Poems contains sections with very different moods. The first ones recapture childhood and wartime experiences and then give way to my personal favorites, a series of poems of love that in one way or another is unattained, incomplete: Pre-Flight, "I called goodbye. By then she couldn't hear.//I pulled the chocks away, and she was gone." Broken Sunlight "streaming down his face." Have You Forgotten "it all, and all so soon?" Me and the Moon. Dancing with Abandon. And Precipice: "and knowing everybody knows//I'm dancing on a cliff edge, unaware//of where the precipice gives way to air."
Others of his poems are portraits of very diverse people, political or social commentary, and (most memorably) flawless parodies of Keats, Poe, W.S. Gilbert, Auden, Shakespeare, Kipling among others. It is in the parodies that he shows the greatest diversity of rhyme and meter, because his ear catches the rhythm of a patter song as easily as iambic pentameters.
Online you will find him knocking out sarcastic little quatrains almost daily, and appearing as a standard contributor in The Rotary Dial. (Two that are too recent to be in this collection are "The Love Song of Donald J. Prufrock" and his baseball sonnet: "On First, Looking into Chapman's Homer".) Come for the wit, stay for the human insights, and you will be rewarded with memorable wordplay and verbal dexterity.
July 12, 2017
Filled with humour and humanity. I think my favourite line was:
"Then, it seemed, the air grew denser, acting as a gull-dispenser"
(that was humour)
"Then, it seemed, the air grew denser, acting as a gull-dispenser"
(that was humour)
August 21, 2017
I don't get to review many poetry books, but these were a great reminder of why I loved poetry in the first place. I had a lot of poems to choose from in this collection, but there were a certain few that stuck out to me.
The first one was titled "How can We Learn?" It's a short poem about the horrors of war, and it's very poignant in its imagery. However, the power of this poem comes from its last stanza, which sums up the futility of war better than I've seen before.
The second one is titled "Rule Number One." It blatantly makes fun of poetry readings and advises that every great poetry reading needs a source of alcohol to keep the audience entertained.
The last one that really stood out was "Hamlet's Neighbor's Soliloquy." It's a fun play on the traditional "To be, or not to be" speech from Hamlet, only this version is from a cranky neighbor's point of view. I was impressed at how he still gave us the feel of the traditional speech while making it comically different.
These are just a few of my favorites from the collection, and I'm confident that there's something in there for everyone to enjoy.
Unfortunately, I did find a few words that might have been misused (like accept instead of except), and some of the poems seemed to change meter halfway through. I don't know if this was accidental or intentional, but it was enough to make me pause.
The first one was titled "How can We Learn?" It's a short poem about the horrors of war, and it's very poignant in its imagery. However, the power of this poem comes from its last stanza, which sums up the futility of war better than I've seen before.
The second one is titled "Rule Number One." It blatantly makes fun of poetry readings and advises that every great poetry reading needs a source of alcohol to keep the audience entertained.
The last one that really stood out was "Hamlet's Neighbor's Soliloquy." It's a fun play on the traditional "To be, or not to be" speech from Hamlet, only this version is from a cranky neighbor's point of view. I was impressed at how he still gave us the feel of the traditional speech while making it comically different.
These are just a few of my favorites from the collection, and I'm confident that there's something in there for everyone to enjoy.
Unfortunately, I did find a few words that might have been misused (like accept instead of except), and some of the poems seemed to change meter halfway through. I don't know if this was accidental or intentional, but it was enough to make me pause.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews