Posted by Homebound Publications. Many thanks to Diane Donovan for her review.
Early praise from Midwest Book Review for Amy Nawrocki’s forthcoming collection, Reconnaissance: by Diane Donovan of Midwest Review.
“Poems inspired by other poems aren’t a rarity: indeed, they are a typical pleasure of poets; because to read others’ works is to become inspired to create your own. It’s been said that the majority of poetry readers are themselves poets. But Amy Nawrocki carries this thought to a higher level in giving voice to Reconnaissance: a mission to probe the influence and presence of other works and to drink deeply of their approaches with the idea of filling one’s writing soul with the inspirations of others.
“But, how to translate this tall drink of water into one’s own works? Ah, that’s where the beauty of Reconnaissance comes in; because like a good investigative mission, it’s all about discovery, translation, and (ultimately) crafting something new and different from the pursuit of this style of happiness.
“Many a good book opens with a map to its contents, pointing out its likely direction, and Reconnaissance‘s map is ‘Guided Tour’, which tells of a circular journey through the cobwebs of life and back again: “Memorize a few loose-leaf pages,/note important dates with precision. Mention/the children by name and explain the heritage…”
“One strength of the poetic structure Nawrocki chooses lies in its capture of these dates, times, moments, and most of all, these atmospheres. In such a world the poet becomes a chronicler of life as well as the poems of others: a process captured here and there by observational pieces about readers, subjects, and writers alike whose lives are more than a folio of interconnected words, however famous they might become: “On the reverse, the message that would escort/Shelley’s poems to an upstairs room where/a man had decided he no longer craved her smile:/lots and lots of love, she wrote in haste, crossing/t’s so that the ink missed their intersection, and/congratulations. His wife would have the child.”
“It’s not just about looking at poetry in book form, either: Reconnaissance investigates all kinds of poetic structure, all methods of delivery, all wellsprings of influence, and all facets of life’s intersections and investigations. Take, for example, a honeymooner’s opening of Paris like a flower: “The collection captures us:/pucker and blow of dizzying lips to trumpet/after trumpet, wet saxophone reeds; a slow trombone slithers and hands skim the wood torso/of an upright bass, leaving the bow behind/for the kinesthetics of the body.”
“Byron. Shelley. Paris. Nawrocki. Evocative image-trackers, succinct capturers of atmosphere, and now, in Reconnaissance, poets enjoying a series of interconnected lives and purposes. Drink deeply: this free verse wellspring is vivid and thought-provoking and quenches the thirst for inspiration.”
Amy Nawrocki 