Heroes without Capes

by Alice Osborn

Heroes without Capes is about the classic struggle against daunting obstacles and how we reach deep down to discover our own heroic natures. Within this collection of dramatic monologues and narrative poems, you'll meet famous and infamous figures from history, myth and pop culture who show varying degrees of heroism and loneliness. Former North Carolina Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti says, “These poems by Alice Osborn—a number of them wonderfully hybrid and distinctive in form—draw a steady bead on heroes and the heroic and, within that malleable context, the anti-hero as well. Heroes without Capes deftly imagines a hierarchy where the fanciful as well as the mundane are rendered not only heroic, but mythic. The language is tough, sanguine, funny and, above all, memorable.”

Genres: Poetry

76 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Alice Osborn’s past educational and work experience is unusually varied, and it now feeds her work as a poet/book editor and singer/songwriter on acoustic guitar. In the past decade, Alice has taught writing workshops to thousands of aspiring fiction, poetry, and memoir authors of nearly all ages from 9 to 90 both around the corner and across continents. Heroes without Capes is her most recent collection of poetry. Previous collections are After the Steaming Stops and Unfinished Projects. Alice is also the editor of the anthologies Tattoos and Creatures of Habitat, both from Main Street Rag. A North Carolina Writers’ Network, North Carolina Poetry Society, and North Carolina Songwriters Co-op board member and a Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in the News and Observer, The Broad River Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Soundings Review and in numerous journals and anthologies. Alice is the musician-in-residence for the Western Wake Farmers' Market who plays Celtic fiddle and bluegrass banjo. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, two children and four birds. Visit Alice's website at www.aliceosborn.com and check out her music at www.reverbnation.com/aliceosborn.

Reviews

[William Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Osborn's fine crafted poetry collection Heroes without Capes captures the quintessential definition of heroism. From the inspiring introduction to the explosive opening poems to the closing (and funny) ones, Osborn brings us into a world of justice. Her poems remind us that even if we don't always get justice in the real world, we can dream of it and fight for it. This collection contains personal poems, historical ones that features past current events, and sociological poems that reflect who we are and where we've been as a society. Don't forget the Star Wars poems and the strange but comical feature of Boba Fett. At the end, I started to wonder if there's a future collection of all Star Wars poems in the works. Either way, I'll be looking forward to Alice's next collection.

[DougInNC · Rating 5 out of 5]

With no preconceptions despite awareness of Alice Osborn's prior works, I ventured inside "Heroes without Capes" to discover a collection that made impressions with each page consumed. Poem by poem, I sought a word or phrase to capture my feelings.

In summary, "Heroes without Capes" presents a quick, crisp, subtle, thoughtful, playful, subdued, detailed, boundless, researched, nuanced, layered, projecting, enduring, cathartic, linguistic, insightful, relatable, imaginative, mysterious, and metaphorical creation of a free mind.

This compilation demonstrates the author's determination and commitment to craft, presenting poems of unbridled range.

The introduction explains this book's particular context of the "heroes" theme, which I found most evident in the piece "LBJ Takes Off." In a later section there appears a distinct "Fett"ish for the fictional Boba Fett that sought to be talked out. If you generally desire to grasp the depth imaginable in a wide variety of characters, objects, and events, you will be enthralled by "Heroes without Capes."

Some of my favorite works and the immediate feelings they engendered:

The metaphor of "Running with Snakes"
The subdued feelings from "August 31, 1997"
The details of "Dina, the Delta 70-seat Jet"
The creativity demonstrated in "Bruce the Shark"
The range shown by "What Really Happened to Mary"
The relatability of "Boba Fett Tries Some Networking"
The subtle intensity of "Meeting the Devil in Myrtle Beach ..."
The pity party described in "Nolan, the Split Foyer, Is Under Stress"
The crazed thought captured in "Captain Bligh: Adventures in Post-Mutiny Rowing ..."

Find your favorites with a whirl through the worlds explored in Alice Osborn's "Heroes without Capes." Enjoy!

[Patrick O'Hannigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection is a triumph of the sympathetic imagination, and a wry romp through the landscapes of relationship. Alice Osborn includes pop culture references that skew toward science fiction, but she's a dab hand with unexpected literary, historical, and political cameos as well.

Several different poetic forms gleam like saltwater fish throughout the chapbook. Even the narrative paragraphs are written sparingly, and with the faint incandescent click made by a twinkle in the eye when it lands fairy-like on a manuscript page.

I have theological disagreements with a couple of the assumptions in a poem called "What Really Happened to Mary," and a denouement there that sounds uncannily like "Lie back and think of England," but that counts (to me) as one mild disappointment in an otherwise stellar field of more than 40 poems.

On the heavily weighted positive side of the ledger, Osborn's odes to coffee and to Hamburger Helper are hilarious. She can pluck heartstrings skillfully, too, as she does with the double entendre in "Running With Snakes," the pathos of "My Parents' Wedding Day," and the frustration of "Southern Ice Storm." It's great stuff -- even before Boba Fett shows up to run a strong anchor leg.

I recommend this collection to any adult reader, especially if he or she has forgotten the sense of that axiom about how a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Alice Osborn can look penetratingly at heroes without capes because, in fact, she's one of them.

[J.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I’m not a big reader of Poetry, there’s so much exposed and hidden in this collection that I’m sure it will amaze the genre fans. Osborn has a deceptively open, narrative-strong style that contains much, much more than the usual intense fragments or vignettes I experience in some modern(ish) poems. These are poems complex as long-form ballades, and would lead the reader to jump to the next in the set while still yearning for the last. The gaps between them are as populated with feeling as their core.

Don’t be fooled by the overt humor of many pieces, these are stories with very personal depth (“The lesbians next door”) and their subtle twists and turns would take you right back to the beginning to read them again. Osborn has also a thing for Star Wars’ Boba Fett (“I slept with Boba Fett”) and quite a few things with Science Fiction characters, who wander around us and make me thing our world is crazier and more fantastic than theirs.

Collectively, these stories resonate with themes of heroism that can be part of our normal lives; heroism that’s a feeling, a way we undertake each day; and above all, heroism that is deep as our humanity. A lot of the poet is in these brilliant poems, and, ultimately, that’s what makes great poetry and Poetry great.

[Brett Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!