Customer Reviews

Shahid Reads His Own Palm

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Reginald Dwayne Betts, <strong>Shahid Reads His Own Palm</strong> (Alice James Books, 2010)

This was a rollercoaster of a book for me. I started out not really feeling it; Betts is a solid poet, no doubt, and it's fantastic to see a poet using formal verse these days, but (a) one-author collections that deal with one subject throughout tend to sound more obsessive than expressive, and (b) Betts has a fondness for ghazals, a form so painfully artificial that it's next to impossible to get to sound natural. (That Betts never succeeds does not get him points off; I've read books of ghazals by acknowledged masters of the form who've been writing them for decades where not a one has been readable.) They're like the Boston Terriers of poetry; sometimes you can see where they came from, but are so badly mutated now they're only good for taking out and showing off now and again around other enthusiasts.

All of which is going to make the next bit of this review sound entirely hypocritical, and so be it. You're not writing this review, you don't get to make that call, as long as I tell you up front I know how hypocritical it is, right? Because what finally sold me on this volume is another painfully artificial form, but one that's a little easier to do right: the pantoum, a Malay-by-way-of-France form that consists of repeating full lines (ABAB BCBC CDCD ... ZAZA). It's still tough, but I've read a lot more workable pantoums than I have ghazals, so I have at least a point of reference. And the one time Betts tries it in here, it's the best poem in the book.

"The cracked walls of cell B8 swore
broken men peeled back tattoos to cry
and some lean shoulders on past highs
after, clank! then yoke followed closed door.

Broken men peeled back tattoos to cry,
touched dirt as some wild man's whore
after, clank! then yoke followed closed door...."
("A Cell Houses a One-Sided War")

It's hit-and-miss, and I rush to add that people who can appreciate ghazals for what they are will have a very different opinion on that than I do, but when you get to the last page of this one, you won't regret having given it a go. ***