Street Love

Author: Walter Dean Myers
Publisher: Amistad
ISBN: 13-978-0-06-028079-6

Street Love is an enchanting love story set in contemporary Harlem. Damien is a rising star, smart and athletic, who is on his way to an Ivy League college and a good life. Junice is a young beauty, struggling to keep her fractured family from disintegrating completely. Damien and Junice’s attraction is thrilling and their uncertainty is palpable. Can two lives on such divergent trajectories merge, or will they merely intersect? Can Damien and Junice meld their long-held dreams? Can they create a future founded on shared dreams? These are the questions that suffuse this story and drive it to its conclusion.

Walter Dean Myers, author of numerous books for teen readers, tells the story of Street Love in free verse. At times, the lines scan as if they’ve been lifted from the blues:

Yeah, it’s hard, baby
It’s hard right down to the bone
I said Oh, it’s hard baby
It’s hard right down to the very bone
It’s hard when you’re a woman
And you find yourself all alone. . . .(p.19).

At other times, lines read as if they’ve come from a recent rap hit:

My folks are laying lines on me like
They’ve written out the part and all
I got to do is get to a place called Start
And follow the road to fame and glory—
A PhD in mucho buckology
Two point five kids and a quick apology
To the starving folks in East Ain’tGotNothingVille . . .(p. 9).

And always, the poetry feels authentic and fresh. You will find few, if any, clichés in this book.

Myers skillfully uses his poetry to accomplish many tasks. In addition to expressing the thoughts, desires, motives and interactions of his characters, Myers uses words to render vivid scenes:

Autumn in Harlem.
Fume-choked leaves, already
Yellowed, crack in the late September
Breeze. Weeds, city tough, city brittle,
Push defiantly along the concrete edges
Of Malcom X Boulevard. . . (p.1).

He uses poetry to depict action:

Then they fight. Fists fly, legs spread
Damien’s fury forcing Sledge to back up
As he wards off the blows. . . .
The two roll on the ground as children watch, never
Putting down their sodas, their bags of chips
It is just the everyday violence of a
Ghetto afternoon. . . (p. 105).

Myers’ writing is frugal and fluid, the work of an author who does not cloak his ideas in excess verbiage, obscure metaphors or archaic language. Moreover, the reader can’t help being swept up in the poetry’s cadences and mentally dancing along with its verbal rhythms. My only criticism of this book is that I would like to have heard more from some members of the supporting cast, such as the social worker who threatens to tear apart Junice’s family, or Damien’s mother, who opposes his relationship with Junice and, particularly, Damien’s father, who longs for a closer relationship with his son. Myers skips through these characters roles so quickly that one may wonder why he included them at all. It may be, however, that Myers’ intended audience, teen readers, would not be as interested in these characters as I am. Perhaps he senses that his readers will want to keep their attention on the primary characters without being distracted by subplots involving older folks. I suspect that Street Love will not appeal strongly to adults. Teens, however, will identify closely with the lead characters and see something of their own longings in this story. They will find this book worth reading.

Poetry Confessions

Author: John G. Briscoe
Publisher: InfinityPublishing.com
ISBN: 0-7414-2926-8

In Poetry Confessions, John Briscoe introduces his new art form, Creative Art Poetry Story (CAPS), which “combines visual art and poetry to tell a story in a unique new way” (p.1). Each poem is accompanied by complementary artwork. And, occasionally, poems are graphically arranged so that they are both textual and visual works. “Gentleman’s Farewell Tease,” (p. 69) is an obvious example of one such graphic poem. In this collection, the poems combine to tell a fictional story of a doomed love affair.

The first thing a reader will notice is that Briscoe’s poems do not adhere to traditional forms. This is not necessarily bad. Many skilled poets have demonstrated that free verse is a flexible tool that is well suited for contemporary poetic expression. In Briscoe’s case, his irregular meters and stanzas, and his unique rhyme schemes, are sometimes clever and refreshing. Note, for example, this couplet:

Starting over takes a lot of compromising.
We both are good at prioritizing (p. 28).

The cadence created by this couplet’s irregular meter is distinctive and charming. And the unusual rhyming of the words “compromising” and “prioritizing” is creative. Passages such as this reveal that Briscoe is quite comfortable working with words and is able to write in a uniquely expressive manner.

Unfortunately, refreshing moments like these are sometimes offset by lapses into truly hackneyed passages, such as this one:

. . . falling in, and out, of love,
and asking forgiveness from the heavenly Father above (p.4).

The “love-above” rhyme is nauseatingly overused in religious poetry and song lyrics. That rhyme, plus the conjunction of the phrases “falling in, and out, of love” and “heavenly Father above,” struck me as an instance in which the author resorted to using well-known, well-worn phrases instead of creating unique ways to express his ideas.

Briscoe’s greatest strength as a writer is that he explores and expresses a wide range of emotions. He writes, sometimes with brutal honesty, about euphoria, despair, anger, joy, loss, contrition and everything in between. Such writing takes tremendous courage and self-confidence.

Briscoe’s greatest weakness as a poet is that, apparently, he can’t live with rhyme and he can’t live without it. The English language lends itself readily to rhyme, which is why so many English-language poets employ it. While this amenability to rhyme is one of the English language’s greatest assets, it is also the source of an extraordinary amount of banal verse. Many English-language poets know, in their heads, that poetry doesn’t always have to rhyme. Nevertheless, it’s extremely difficult to escape the notion, in their hearts, that poetry ought to rhyme. At times, Briscoe seems to be stuck in this quandary. The result is that much of his rhyme appears to be accidental or incidental rather than intentional. It is not unusual for him to waiver between rhymed and unrhymed lines within the space of one poem, or even within a stanza. This inconsistency is disconcerting. If, in a particular poem, he intends to reject rhyme, then he should reject it throughout. If, in a particular poem, he intends to employ rhyme, then he should employ it with discipline and consistency throughout. In their current forms, many of the poems in this collection are passionate and expressive, but incoherent as poetry.

I admire Briscoe’s passion and his willingness to explore the complexities, frailties and imperfections of human relationships. He is an able writer and I look forward to seeing him develop his voice and style in the coming years. Poetry Confessions is more compelling as a story, however, than as a collection of poetry. If you are looking for good poetry, you won’t find very much of it in this book. If you enjoy delving into new story forms, however, you may find Poetry Confessions intriguing.