Review of “Becoming”, by D. Garcia Wahl
Whistling Shade, 2010
http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-D-Garcia-Wahl/dp/0980037581/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311559989&sr=8-2
Dylan is a unique voice in American literature and a shining example of what poetry is supposed to be. The images formed from his words and stanzas cross many boundaries and fight successfully to stand-alone atop the rocky shorelines.
What we have here are poems striking a fine balance between the intellectual and romanticism. Dylan plays with religious concepts and images without leading down any particular path or from any one sect. The longing of ages, a desire to return to a previous time when gods and goddesses walked among the poets and philosophers, each seeking love, and they shared in wine and food, provides a necessary backdrop and synopsis of the man behind these words.
Highlights:
• Baptism – Contains a beautiful lyrical flow to the lines and stanzas
• Beseech the Island, calmly – Part iii – Shows the poets place in balance between dream and words blending with the landscape:
“The poem fresh from a dream
where he was asked to explain himself
by the old woman whose mortal ashes
were scattered to these baritone waters.
The time arrives to let ink flow to paper.
The poet immortal,
Floating chained to the shoreline.”
• Plum Solace
• Philosopher Torn
• Jazz at the Dakotah – Distinct images of tactile objects and the physical representation, both on the page and in the readers mind, of music beats and the jazz players allowing you a peak behind the curtains of their world.
In life there is beauty and in life there is death. As such, in death there is beauty to be found. In these poems, both beauty and death are players in a game including the author. This love triangle scratches the surface of man’s role within nature. The landscape serves as the backdrop to the emotional play divided into ageless acts where love is the unscripted words between the audience and the actors.
We hear the overarching desire and we feel the author reaching outward and see the eyes looking at what he is able to grab and hold onto. I recommend grabbing hold of this book and letting the images grab hold of you until you can no longer resists opening your heart up just a bit.