Authors thank reviewers: Charles Monagan

You can find the review for Carrie Welton here.

Pocket Poems by Randal Fosdick Moore

Here's the thing - I am a poet.  And I am also an editor.  These pieces of information will weigh heavily on mind as I share my thoughts - poetic and editorial - on Pocket Poems by Randal Fosdick Moore.

There were poems here I absolutely loved...  But there were also pieces here that made me peevish and annoyed.  There were poems that I would love to sit with Mr. Moore and hash out - remove a line here, change the "you" to "I", or rearrange stanzas of an entire poem in a completely different order.  And there were poems so good I read and just sat back and felt them - felt the trail of sensation they left behind.

I disagree with the description on the back of the copy in my possession calling this slim volume a collection of "simple, polaroid, paranoid poems of human observations..."  Sure, this is a collection of simple pieces... and even Polaroid in its sudden, snapshotting look at experiences... But no way is this book "paranoid"!  And it isn't just a book of poems observing humans, it is also the poetry of being human and seeing, thinking, feeling.

And in these poems, I don't find "a shag carpet ride"...  No!  I find something else - something timeless, honest, vulnerable.  I am excited to tell people about Mr. Moore's poetry.  It is so true and real that it reminds me of Andrew Wyeth's paintings - unashamed and... like a Polaroid.  

With the lack of punctuation and capitalization found in ee cummings' works, I can sense Mr. Moore has lived through many artistic movements in painting, music, poetry, literature, and even politics.  And the poems are brief, sincere, and exact.  There is no drama and no made-up hysterics.

My real issue here is that some of the pieces remind me of ones I, myself, have written that are not amazing, not really to share, but just poems I wrote because they needed to come out and onto paper, thereby making room for the better lines and stanzas that would ultimately follow.  So I winced a bit when I came upon those.  But then I would read a piece like "never made":

shadow touching shadow
feeling with no fate
the eternal eerie echo
of love   
    that comes too late

cold damp cave of fever
dagger
with no blade
forlorn they left life undisturbed
by love
     they never made

Or "breaker":

i followed you in
to the shoreline
to touch you
when suddenly i felt you
slip from under me
on your way back to the sea

Poetry to me is a visual image of the senses conveyed in words.  Mr. Moore has captured in some of his works what I love in Jane Kenyon, Emily Dickinson, William Stafford, and Harry Chapin, Paul McCartney, Dan Fogelberg, and Andrew Wyeth, Vermeer, and Van Gogh - truth honestly seen and felt, then shared, quite simply.

For more information on Randal Fosdick Moore: http://www.jacksonvilleprogress.com/texas-man-writes-about-rusk-landmark/article_9ae2b202-c83c-58e7-b680-0ffca3a4509f.html

Photo Credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/611KU%2BKQM9L._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I received the book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Carrie Welton by Charles Monagan

Charles Monagan is an award-winning journalist, writer, editor, and lyricist. Carrie Welton may just be one of the best indie-published historical novels I have read in a while.  It has its flaws, but here, finally is a complete and well-told tale... that also happens to be true!

Carrie Welton is the story of a young woman who is determined to remain untamed by an abusive father and acquiescent mother.  Hemmed in only a bit by propriety and social expectations, Carrie's life takes her from a wealthy youth in Connecticut, to the artistic communities of New York, and finally to the Rocky Mountains.  Readers can follow her childhood closeness with her horse and sympathetic companion, Knight, to her financial involvement in the beginnings of the ASPCA.  Twined with the changing politics and social temperature of the mid to late 1800s, Carrie's life is a perfect backdrop for the history that carved a new nation into a country that would not be divided.

Readers are introduced to Carrie in a prologue offered by neighbor and confidante, Frederick, who also narrates Parts 1 and 3.  It was thrilling to read the voice of a 19th century narrator written in the 21st century.  Part 2 is third-person limited, focusing on Carrie's experiences away from Rose Hill, the home in which she had met abuse and tyranny.  And here, I must admit, I missed Frederick's voice.  It was much more appealing to come through his perspective than merely watching Carrie as we do in Part 2.

Mr. Monagan's skill as writer and researcher is clear in this work.  Obvious, also, is his knack for stories that interest.  His abilities in perception and perspective carry the plot where there is little historical information available.  This made the rare moments of too-much-historical-detail forgivable.  The sense of reportage Mr. Monagan has is spot-on in his description of the effects of the coming Civil War on the communities of Connecticut.

Life doesn't have the same arc that fiction does, but Mr. Monagan gives it a hearty go in this fascinating book.  There are moments of beautiful imagery and even a few absolutely perfect sentences here.  And while I agreed to review this book because I have found myself in the same locations as Carrie (a New England childhood and adulthood in the Rocky Mountains), it is not a book that will just interest readers of local history.  It is a solid story of an intriguing personality that will haunt. 

Photo Credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51y1b1sGWeL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I received this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.