Familiar Faces/Private Griefs

Lynne Kositsky was a poet in Toronto.

Familiar Faces/Private Griefs is, as can be anticipated from its title, a collection of poetry in two sections; the first section, “Familiar Faces,” concerns people who have passed, perhaps fleetingly, through the life of the poet, while “Private Griefs” endeavours to come to terms with actual or future loss.

The sections are uniformly competent, as may be expected from the author of The Crafted Poem. However, some of the poetry in“Familiar Faces” suffers from a lack of passion and a plethora of adjectives which hinder the poet’s purpose and tend to obscure meaning. “The Celebration” and “Her Husband Jealous,” however, rise above these criticisms, for Ioannou is at her best when writing about herself.

“Private Griefs” is generated by strong emotion and an often bitter sense of loss, and is by far the more compelling section. In particular, Ioannou’s poems about her father are excellent poetic achievements, and strike a chord of recognition in the reader. Nevertheless, the consecutive study of twenty poems which are all essentially memorials is somewhat overwhelming, and for this reason it might have been a better idea for the editor to integrate the two sections of the book.