Moans and Waves

Betsy Struthers is a poet and novelist and the author of Found: A Body.

From his six-page author’s preface to Moans and Waves, Stephen Gil clearly has serious intentions. Unfortunately, his poems not only show little craft in their construction but lack either a strong voice or arresting images. I wish I had the space to quote in full such pieces as “Ask Me Not What Is Love,” “I Wish She Were Alive,” or “When I See,” but the final stanza of the latter will have to speak for the whole volume:

good the victim of violence

fanaticism on the increase

hatred, war, no peace

greed tightening its grip

no thanks for God’s gifts

the coming of Christ.

Like Gill, J. Kirby Smith means well. His lyrical and lovely thoughts about nature and lost love are told in rather old-fashioned metres and rhyme schemes reminiscent of Poe, Longfellow, and the Elizabethans (although he has spared us sonnets). However, Smith often changes metres in mid-verse and his anxious quest for suitable rhymes can distort his meaning or lend his verse unintentional humour. My favourite is this stanza from “Oh My Dear April”:

Oh, I bleed this month; there is something in the air

That recalls fresher happenings and beginnings in my life

Simple times that seemed easier to bear

And a breathless holding hands with my ex-wife.