Customer Reviews

Bonfire: Poems by Connie Wanek (MVP)

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Wanek used a lot of simple images. Smooth, rolling lines that flowed together connect very well. She took things that were beautiful and turned them into concrete pictures. She used ideas that you can relate to. I felt as if there was a one on one connection. She used a lot of common everyday images. These are poems that could be looked at 10 years from now and still be current. I felt there was no emotions in the poems. No sadness or pain. I liked it that way. Connie Wanek's poetry gives you a sense of depth. I found her words to be very confident. When she used words of abstraction, they usually left me with a clear solid image in my mind. She uses ideas that I have subconsciously thought, surfaces memories.

This book, Connie Wanek's first poetry collection, has all of the hallmarks of her later two collections: clear, clean lines on common subjects that give the reader unexpected insights. Her images are memorable, such as this gem from her poem, "Red Fox":

"The fox
saw two dogs at the bay window, watching,
their coarse, domesticated faces
full of eager malevolence, like ex-wives."

Her treatment of simple, humble subjects often invests them with personality that catches the reader's attention. For example in her poem, "The Gelding," she introduces us to a cynical, mean horse that has been through the school of hard knocks:

"As I recall, the black horse just appeared
undelivered, unrequested,
dusty and skinny, like a tramp
with his hat in his good hand.
He was used to pity. He could work with that."

And how many poems have you read about sea gulls? I suggest that Wanek's poem, "Aesop's Sea Gulls," captures the character of this solipsistic bird better than most with stanzas like this one:

"A child holds aloft a French fry
and they're on him, a scrum of gulls
bickering like politicians.
Now bold, now obsequious,
they flatter him out of his last morsel."

And I love the poem's aphoristic closing line, "Those with wings have no need of morals."

My favorite poem in the collection is "Radiator," one that's been anthologized for good reason. A bland, easily overlooked machine takes on a life of its own as the poem progresses toward a curiously unsettling conclusion that radiators (like us) feel a sadness, "unlovely, slowly growing cold."

I look forward to one day buying "Connie Wanek: Collected Poems"!