By Caprice Hogg
This small book of poems is thought provoking, with little moments of time captured in words. The poems were visceral. They evoked all the senses. The reader cannot help but to be transported when they read lines like this: “The shower coaxes the woodsmoke from your hair, macerates all that’s between your toes, softens callouses that forgot the feel of floors”.
I enjoyed sitting down to read this book from cover to cover but also found pleasure in picking it up at odd moments and opening to a random page to just read a poem or two. I have read the poems over and over. Each time my thoughts would skip a beat with a line in a poem that was completely unexpected. A poem about a pumpkin plant growing throughout the summer would end describing the cat’s new litter box. The poems made the synapses in my brain jump. The poet takes us to a different world—she takes us west. She shows examples of seeing life in a different way, a different lifestyle. Here is one of my favorite excerpts from her poem “Plans”:
I’m leaving town to felt shirts out of belly button lint
got big plans for the coast
where snow doesn’t harden
and you can leave keys in your door
making proposals to salt water
I’ll learn to weave long underwear
out of barbershop trimmings
melt acrylic nails down for windowpanes
and pulp utility bills into letter stock
Perhaps the reason these words resonate with me is because I too have moved west. In just a few words, Hargreaves has transported the reader to a wholly fresh life. I like to imagine that life even if I choose not to live it fully. And maybe as I read these poems more, I will be able to create more of that sweet life in my daily life? Isn’t that what poetry and art is all about? This book only has 84 pages and some pages contain only a few words, but they leave the reader wanting more. It felt like taking a trip and it is one I would highly recommend.
Thank you to Book*hug Press for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.