Review by MephXV -- The Immigrant's Lament
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Immigrant's Lament" by Mois benarroch.]
3 out of 4 stars
Review by MephXV
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The Immigrant’s Lament is a collection of poems that, in their entirety, paint a picture of life, the life of this particular individual--replete with narratives of childhood, family, loves, and concerns. The way in which the author weaves together an otherwise disparate collection of stories is interesting, but there are certain aspects about the way in which they are presented that detracts from the force of the meaning which the author attempts to convey.
One thing the reader might find distracting is the lack of punctuation. At the end of a poem, there is a period, but sometimes that is all that is there as far as punctuation goes; sometimes, there is no punctuation for an entire page of text. The inclusion of a period in the middle of a poem gives the impression that punctuation is missing elsewhere, and comes off as odd, distracting, and inconsistent. This lends the poems a more stream of consciousness feel, where some sections seem to feel incomplete: “my brother Levi disappears/and we’re looking for him again/the recurrent dream of the falling lamps/private lessons in Arabic”. This section is, indeed, understandable, but it might be the case that implementing punctuation or some other way of demarcating one thought from the next could preserve the flow and strengthen the writing. Alternatively, the reader may see this technique as more fitting, as it implies a certain transiency and quickness of life, and the how loosely connected one’s reminiscing can be. There are few instances of spacing issues or extraneous words, such as in the poem “The Buddha from Afghanistan”, wherein reads “...the statues more still more important”. There’s one instance in which four verses in one poem are repeated verbatim elsewhere: “Right or wrong” appears in its entirety within “Les entrailles du poete”. Note that there is a typo within the former but not within the latter, even though the former appears later in this book than the latter, not to mention small differences such as “I am” in one but “I’m” in the other suggesting this repeat may have been deliberate.
In other places, a new, seemingly unconnected theme, is (at first glance) shoehorned into the mix, such as going from a French tourist, to childhood, to a black flower in the matter of just a few lines. This reinforces the stream of consciousness feel to the work. The reader is given a surface glance to this life, but at no point does the author reflect in detail upon what has been written; rather, what we are granted access to is more of a disparate collection of stories from one’s life. I would have liked to see more emotions rise to the surface and manifest in the poetry. There are glimpses of this, but nothing that comes off as raw and visceral.
The lengths of the poems vary, from a few lines, to spanning across multiple pages; the last one drags on for over a dozen. This constant switching may appear inconsistent to some, but it also affords the opportunity to delve just a little deeper within a poem by making it longer, or to deliver the quickly with a shorter poem. This mismatch of lengths of the poems did, however, make some of the shorter ones seem less salient. Extremely short ones, such as “the last words of the immigrant”, which is a mere three lines long, could be considered more of an aphorism.
If you are looking for a collection of poems that depict one’s life as collection of memories and reflections, this might be a book to acquire. The way in which the text read, with the punctuation and sudden switch in topics, detracted from the force of the words, but was not too distracting. Hence, I give it three out of four stars, but just barely. The pictures which the poems paint are intriguing enough to warrant a three instead of a two, but there are a multitude of missed opportunities within the poems that did not delve deeper, which made me thirsting for more.
******
The Immigrant's Lament
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
3 out of 4 stars
Review by MephXV
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One thing the reader might find distracting is the lack of punctuation. At the end of a poem, there is a period, but sometimes that is all that is there as far as punctuation goes; sometimes, there is no punctuation for an entire page of text. The inclusion of a period in the middle of a poem gives the impression that punctuation is missing elsewhere, and comes off as odd, distracting, and inconsistent. This lends the poems a more stream of consciousness feel, where some sections seem to feel incomplete: “my brother Levi disappears/and we’re looking for him again/the recurrent dream of the falling lamps/private lessons in Arabic”. This section is, indeed, understandable, but it might be the case that implementing punctuation or some other way of demarcating one thought from the next could preserve the flow and strengthen the writing. Alternatively, the reader may see this technique as more fitting, as it implies a certain transiency and quickness of life, and the how loosely connected one’s reminiscing can be. There are few instances of spacing issues or extraneous words, such as in the poem “The Buddha from Afghanistan”, wherein reads “...the statues more still more important”. There’s one instance in which four verses in one poem are repeated verbatim elsewhere: “Right or wrong” appears in its entirety within “Les entrailles du poete”. Note that there is a typo within the former but not within the latter, even though the former appears later in this book than the latter, not to mention small differences such as “I am” in one but “I’m” in the other suggesting this repeat may have been deliberate.
In other places, a new, seemingly unconnected theme, is (at first glance) shoehorned into the mix, such as going from a French tourist, to childhood, to a black flower in the matter of just a few lines. This reinforces the stream of consciousness feel to the work. The reader is given a surface glance to this life, but at no point does the author reflect in detail upon what has been written; rather, what we are granted access to is more of a disparate collection of stories from one’s life. I would have liked to see more emotions rise to the surface and manifest in the poetry. There are glimpses of this, but nothing that comes off as raw and visceral.
The lengths of the poems vary, from a few lines, to spanning across multiple pages; the last one drags on for over a dozen. This constant switching may appear inconsistent to some, but it also affords the opportunity to delve just a little deeper within a poem by making it longer, or to deliver the quickly with a shorter poem. This mismatch of lengths of the poems did, however, make some of the shorter ones seem less salient. Extremely short ones, such as “the last words of the immigrant”, which is a mere three lines long, could be considered more of an aphorism.
If you are looking for a collection of poems that depict one’s life as collection of memories and reflections, this might be a book to acquire. The way in which the text read, with the punctuation and sudden switch in topics, detracted from the force of the words, but was not too distracting. Hence, I give it three out of four stars, but just barely. The pictures which the poems paint are intriguing enough to warrant a three instead of a two, but there are a multitude of missed opportunities within the poems that did not delve deeper, which made me thirsting for more.
******
The Immigrant's Lament
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
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