Saturday Review: “More True Than Slant” a review by David E. Poston in NCLR Online Spring 2024 of Christie Collins’ The Art of Coming Undone (2023) and Ross White’s Charm Offensive (2023) poetry collections
Poston reviews these first full-length poetry collections by two prolific teaching poets. He writes, “Both these collections lead us through careful examination of our fears and misconceptions to what is ultimately both a more honest and a more hopeful perspective.”
Collins’ “collection’s epigraphs identify the major themes of these poems and illustrations: love and loss, how to overcome loss, and how to become one’s truest self,” Poston states. He pulls lines (or entire pieces) from ten poems as evidence. Also included is one of artworks by Dutch artist Erna
Kuik, part of eleven ekphrastic pairings in the collection.
“White has a keen, wide-ranging eye and the mastery of craft to write with self-assurance about topics ranging from skunks to quahogs to divination,” Poston says. “White chooses to present his most vulnerable poems, including a series of love poems, in his concluding section, where he explores grief and pain before finding a resolution which includes, if not joy, at least some measure of contentment
and self-acceptance.”
Read the entire review in the Online Spring 2024 issue out now! To order: The Art of Coming Undone Charm Offensive, both at Black Spring Press.
