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How Light Leaves
In HOW LIGHT LEAVES, James Crews gives readers what John Updike once famously called “the human news.” He writes with raw honesty about the loss of his father and an ever-changing, yet consciously alive, natural world that promises relief from even the worst of our grief. These poems delve deeply and wholeheartedly into each moment, with scenes made transcendent by Crews’ close observation of a world always accessible to us, which he reminds us “we can trace with our naked eyes.”
- GenresPoetry
44 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 2, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 28, 2017
This book is very impressive.
I know absolutely nothing about this poet, James Crews, aside from the fact that he's an American -
going off one poem in this book describes him having car crash and calling 911. Other than that, I don't know anything about him, and yet he has this style that is extremely relatable and immediate. It feels like he is talking directly to you. There is this charm and ease in these poems that makes them feel so conversational, and yet the form and subtle word-play and structures keep you reminded that these are poems.
I was well disposed to this collection from the first poem 'As You Label it, So it Appears to You' a poem that deserves to be quoted just to show the full expressive power of this poet:
If you say I see a heron lifting off
hours before dawn, I mean I see
a long, blue piece of me unraveling
from the dark, landing in the creek
to hunt a glint of fish, then taking it
writhing into a mouth silvered by
light some call the moon, but which
is merely a buffed steel cap that barely
holds back the spill of summer sun.
The heron can already sense the water
warming up the way we know a word
spoken into a glass of liquid over time
will change its molecules: Call it holy,
Holy is what you will taste.
This is an exceptionally mature poem, I think it's as good as anything by one of the great poets of the past, and is very much in the formal styling of a poet like Elizabeth Bishop or Seamus Heaney. There is something in the contrast between the human-constructed beauty of the scene and the actual scene that is being described - a heron eating a fish, being the unsentimental savagery of nature, which also means Robert Frost has not terribly far from my thoughts on this book either. There is also something, I think, Catullian about this poem, and the meter and structure it uses.
The next poem 'Midnight Snow' is a simple scene of an otter sliding into a lake, a scene straight out of John Clare, and just like Clare these poems are able to find something in just the scene itself to pull it through without any trust in great technical innovation or ingenuity. That is both praise and criticism, but while James Crews seems very happy to write in blank verse (in which he is an honest-to-god master of the form) it's rare he steps outside of blank verse. I like blank verse, and I like depictions of nature and snow - two things James Crews also seems to enjoy a lot - but there is a feeling this collection is playing to the poet's strengths.
This is not really a bad thing, and modern poetry needs more unpretentious formal poetry exactly like this, and after having a curious glance through one of those penguin collections of modern poets in my nearest Waterstones about a week ago where every poem is the poet screaming 'LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW CLEVER AND SUBVERSIVE I AM!' the modesty, restraint, and power of James Crews' blank verse is such a welcome change and revitalisation that I think I would have liked this book even if the poetry itself was not as good as it is here.
I'll have to buy and read one of those Penguin Modern Poets collections in full soon enough, but from what I read of them they just seem awful.
The poem 'Last Kiss' is an exceptionally poignant piece detailing the death of the poet's father and the way he and his mother dealt with the death in their own small ways. In some strange way it reminded me of the Seamus Heaney poem 'Midterm Break' only here there is a sense of cathartic release, like when the poet kisses the corpse of his father goodbye the poem ends with 'as fast as I could, taking with me the last of his breath.' and this final line acts almost like a second death, a death of the idea of the father as alive, that is extremely poignant and moving. That is in no way a criticism of the Heaney poem, there it's fitting that there is no 'release', and that poem just sort of leaves hanging on a sad realisation, but here for Crews there is almost a weird sense of contented finality; like 'finally, it is finished'.
The rest of the book deals in various ways and on various levels with the aftermath of this poem, and there is obvious connection between this subject (the death of the poet's father) the title, and the title poem, it is hard to not connect the leaving of light with the leaving of life - the proverbial light in the eye. The tight focus of this book around questions of mortality and the brutality of nature makes James Crews a seriously under appreciated talent in modern poetry.
The poet is obviously very well read, and it very clearly shows. Two poets James Crews very clearly knows and has read are Rilke (who the poet depicts himself reading at a train station, looking at a guy who reminds him of his father - another fine poem, actually) and Walt Whitman, through a poem called 'The Body Electric'. There is no doubt more to say about the connection between this book and Walt Whitman's incredibly versatile use of language, and the way he is able to keep things controlled while having the appearance of loose spontaneity that Crews is also able to do extremely well. Rilke I don't know, I've ever read him before, but what I am ultimately trying to say is that Crews is a poet who knows poetry, and has a deep respect and passion for it. Like Whitman's use of free verse, so is Crews' use of blank verse. That might be a good way to think about this book.
I happened to see this book on Goodreads yesterday and the description interested me, so downloaded the kindle version. I'm very glad I did. There's a lot to be said for making a random impulse purchase when it just somehow feels right, and I've never been against doing it - I'm quite bad for it, but I started this year hoping that I wouldn't buy any more books at all until my 'To Read' list has been got through. That dedication to not buying new books, but getting through the books I own, and that has mostly held - the only exceptions have been books of poetry.
A friend keeps telling me I'm too hard to please, and he has often shown me a comic book film expecting me (for some reason) to not have anything bad to say, and when I inevitably do because I'm 'hard to please' he calls me a snob, or pretentious; I don't mind being called the first, but the second isn't true. I've been reading serious literature my entire life, and I know what I like and what I do not like - and I like to think I know why I do not like something. There are very few times I think a book is worth recommending whole-heartedly to someone without knowing them well first, because it'd feel bad thinking I had wasted their time, and as such I don't often recommend books to people I don't know, but this book is one I would recommend to people I do not know.
I hope Crews' publisher does a LOT to publicise this book, and really push Crews as the brilliant, serious poet he is. I hope, too, he lives up to what I've seen here.
I know absolutely nothing about this poet, James Crews, aside from the fact that he's an American -
going off one poem in this book describes him having car crash and calling 911. Other than that, I don't know anything about him, and yet he has this style that is extremely relatable and immediate. It feels like he is talking directly to you. There is this charm and ease in these poems that makes them feel so conversational, and yet the form and subtle word-play and structures keep you reminded that these are poems.
I was well disposed to this collection from the first poem 'As You Label it, So it Appears to You' a poem that deserves to be quoted just to show the full expressive power of this poet:
If you say I see a heron lifting off
hours before dawn, I mean I see
a long, blue piece of me unraveling
from the dark, landing in the creek
to hunt a glint of fish, then taking it
writhing into a mouth silvered by
light some call the moon, but which
is merely a buffed steel cap that barely
holds back the spill of summer sun.
The heron can already sense the water
warming up the way we know a word
spoken into a glass of liquid over time
will change its molecules: Call it holy,
Holy is what you will taste.
This is an exceptionally mature poem, I think it's as good as anything by one of the great poets of the past, and is very much in the formal styling of a poet like Elizabeth Bishop or Seamus Heaney. There is something in the contrast between the human-constructed beauty of the scene and the actual scene that is being described - a heron eating a fish, being the unsentimental savagery of nature, which also means Robert Frost has not terribly far from my thoughts on this book either. There is also something, I think, Catullian about this poem, and the meter and structure it uses.
The next poem 'Midnight Snow' is a simple scene of an otter sliding into a lake, a scene straight out of John Clare, and just like Clare these poems are able to find something in just the scene itself to pull it through without any trust in great technical innovation or ingenuity. That is both praise and criticism, but while James Crews seems very happy to write in blank verse (in which he is an honest-to-god master of the form) it's rare he steps outside of blank verse. I like blank verse, and I like depictions of nature and snow - two things James Crews also seems to enjoy a lot - but there is a feeling this collection is playing to the poet's strengths.
This is not really a bad thing, and modern poetry needs more unpretentious formal poetry exactly like this, and after having a curious glance through one of those penguin collections of modern poets in my nearest Waterstones about a week ago where every poem is the poet screaming 'LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW CLEVER AND SUBVERSIVE I AM!' the modesty, restraint, and power of James Crews' blank verse is such a welcome change and revitalisation that I think I would have liked this book even if the poetry itself was not as good as it is here.
I'll have to buy and read one of those Penguin Modern Poets collections in full soon enough, but from what I read of them they just seem awful.
The poem 'Last Kiss' is an exceptionally poignant piece detailing the death of the poet's father and the way he and his mother dealt with the death in their own small ways. In some strange way it reminded me of the Seamus Heaney poem 'Midterm Break' only here there is a sense of cathartic release, like when the poet kisses the corpse of his father goodbye the poem ends with 'as fast as I could, taking with me the last of his breath.' and this final line acts almost like a second death, a death of the idea of the father as alive, that is extremely poignant and moving. That is in no way a criticism of the Heaney poem, there it's fitting that there is no 'release', and that poem just sort of leaves hanging on a sad realisation, but here for Crews there is almost a weird sense of contented finality; like 'finally, it is finished'.
The rest of the book deals in various ways and on various levels with the aftermath of this poem, and there is obvious connection between this subject (the death of the poet's father) the title, and the title poem, it is hard to not connect the leaving of light with the leaving of life - the proverbial light in the eye. The tight focus of this book around questions of mortality and the brutality of nature makes James Crews a seriously under appreciated talent in modern poetry.
The poet is obviously very well read, and it very clearly shows. Two poets James Crews very clearly knows and has read are Rilke (who the poet depicts himself reading at a train station, looking at a guy who reminds him of his father - another fine poem, actually) and Walt Whitman, through a poem called 'The Body Electric'. There is no doubt more to say about the connection between this book and Walt Whitman's incredibly versatile use of language, and the way he is able to keep things controlled while having the appearance of loose spontaneity that Crews is also able to do extremely well. Rilke I don't know, I've ever read him before, but what I am ultimately trying to say is that Crews is a poet who knows poetry, and has a deep respect and passion for it. Like Whitman's use of free verse, so is Crews' use of blank verse. That might be a good way to think about this book.
I happened to see this book on Goodreads yesterday and the description interested me, so downloaded the kindle version. I'm very glad I did. There's a lot to be said for making a random impulse purchase when it just somehow feels right, and I've never been against doing it - I'm quite bad for it, but I started this year hoping that I wouldn't buy any more books at all until my 'To Read' list has been got through. That dedication to not buying new books, but getting through the books I own, and that has mostly held - the only exceptions have been books of poetry.
A friend keeps telling me I'm too hard to please, and he has often shown me a comic book film expecting me (for some reason) to not have anything bad to say, and when I inevitably do because I'm 'hard to please' he calls me a snob, or pretentious; I don't mind being called the first, but the second isn't true. I've been reading serious literature my entire life, and I know what I like and what I do not like - and I like to think I know why I do not like something. There are very few times I think a book is worth recommending whole-heartedly to someone without knowing them well first, because it'd feel bad thinking I had wasted their time, and as such I don't often recommend books to people I don't know, but this book is one I would recommend to people I do not know.
I hope Crews' publisher does a LOT to publicise this book, and really push Crews as the brilliant, serious poet he is. I hope, too, he lives up to what I've seen here.
September 6, 2019
This highly accessible collection of poetry features poems w/ nature themes and poems paying homage to family. I really like each poem and can see students experiencing many aha moments reading this collection. Teachers will find nice tone shifts as well as poems w/ lines to pull and use as invitations to student writers.
June 24, 2017
I recently received this book in a Goodreads giveaway and have picked it up several times and read and reread these poignant pieces. I particularly liked "I Consider Again Our Transience" (with the intriguing opening line, "What do you think death will be like?") and "On The Water" and I can quite understand why James Crews first collection of poetry won him an award. He is a gifted poet and I have no hesitation in giving this collection a five star review.
March 5, 2018
Just beautiful and inspiring.
August 23, 2021
Every Word
I am in love with every image - with every word. Grateful for this find. There is healing in words such as these.
I am in love with every image - with every word. Grateful for this find. There is healing in words such as these.
November 3, 2016
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews