Stories to Finish and Other Poems

Brian Burch is a teacher, writer and poet and author of Still Under the
Thumb.

Stories to Finish and Other Poems isan impressive collection that shows both the knowledge of poetics expected from an academic and the freshness of a new writer just realizing the beauty of poetry. With short, imagistic poems combined with more narrative verse, this book could easily serve as a model text for a creative writing class.

This is Alice Van Wart’s second collection. She shows a remarkable ability to make real the most complex of images with the simplest of language. In “Auschwitz Revisited,” for example, the horrors of the Holocaust and our contemporary response to itis revealed:

apparatus for torture, objects tied

to a time when nothing was sacred

not the skin, the bones, the heart, the soul.

Outside the souvenir stands they buy

Auschwitz lapel pins in Polish or German

picture postcards of gas chambers

Auschwitz ball-point pens.

Wart’s book is divided into three sections of which only the second, “Stories to Finish,” is titled. The first section deals with her travels, both internal and global. The second, “Stories to Finish,” is based on major Greek myths and on the powers of mystical animals. By using the common images we hold of Medea or a unicorn, Van Wart weaves for us the world of a woman in a society that does not value the worth and images of women. The final section reveals the rise, fall, and recovery from an intense relationship. It manages to do so without using common images or phrases, thus givinga fresh perspective on love and love poetry.

Wart’s Stories to Finish is a collection that provokes the reader and leaves behind a sense of freshness and originality that lingers long after the last page is turned.