Customer Reviews

Undoing

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I love "Undoing." James Cihlar's poems are beautiful, packed with details that make them seem simultaneously familiar and sort of curated, on display. The sense of home and relationships that his words evoke -- and sometimes rely on -- is particularly compelling. This book makes me want to write and call my family in rapid succession.

James Cihlar's debut collection is a generous yet unflinching portrait of the unraveling of an American family. Always honest and brilliantly crafted, these poems face life head-on. The poet subtly pulls back the layers of myth and willful misunderstanding that trap so many of us in unfulfilled dreams, and exposes the true and sometimes beautiful lives that lie underneath. Cihlar's poems are mirrors, filled with flashes of the wonderful and the dreadful, the complicated and conflicted faces that we each wear, and the masks behind which we sometimes hide. Highly recommended!

Undoing...poems by James Cihlar. The poems in James Cihlar's Undoing are haunted by a difficult childhood, estrangement, and finally the compelling desire to find one's place in the world--"Life starts on the inside, / with the burnt sienna tile of the fireplace, / the leaded glass window, the maple floors." Cihlar has a passion for details. The objects in a junk store become unbroken talismans of childhood--"Schroeder and Lucy Welch's grape jelly jar..." Objects from his mother are alive for Cihlar--"Victorian sheet music stand. / African woven basket. / Coir rug in front of the sink. / Clouds in a pale blue border. / Inset rectangle of a periwinkle sky. / Rainbow fan of kites flying away." There is a beautiful melancholy to this book--a solemn, almost processional, dignity in its revelations--"Even if I glued the shards together, I would comprehend / The fissures webbing the porcelain, the pressure points of weakness, / Which is my undoing." The emotional energy in this book comes from Cihlar's resolve in finding his way toward home ground. (Little Pear Press, 87 pp. $15.00) Tim Nolan