Book Reviews: Bent by T.A. Price

Happy Sunday, everyone! Today I want to shift gears from fiction and prose and give some attention to poetry. In particular, I want to introduce you to an engaging and talented modern poet named T.A. Price and review her collection of poems, Bent: 31 Poems.

Each of us has a story to tell buried in our pasts. We have had hard times, extraordinary times, beautiful times, times we’d rather forget. Regardless of the kind of story, we could all fill an entire book with our childhoods alone. That’s exactly what Price explores in Bent, the narrator’s unique story and connections in a series of poems.

Price’s poetry illustrates several strokes which go into the painting of the human experience: family, love, compassion, relationships, heartache, nostalgia, and more. Her poems include sweet moments of familial love as well as feelings of being the odd-man-out in your own family, tender hearts and heart break. The flair of a North Carolina upbringing shines in each line, giving the poetry a flair which can only be found in that state.

I am a fan of poetry, from Shel Silverstein’s childlike amusement and Dr. Seuss’s simplified political stances to the sophisticated call-to-arms of Percy Shelley and Robert Frost’s quiet self-reflection. Regardless, I’ve always been a bigger prose fan. Poetry, for me, is often too difficult to digest in just one read, which makes it hard for me to get and stay engaged in the poems. Still, Price’s poems are both easy to understand and compelling, allowing for me to complete the collection in one sitting.

That’s not to say that her work is oversimplified or lacks depth and/or variety of vocabulary. In fact, Price uses a mix of common vernacular and more complex terminology that her poems kept me on my toes, never so comfortable as to be bored but never frustrated with the amount of words I had to look up. Lines such as “across my splattered sky in hopeful sighting / of the perennial Trifid” are prominent in these poems. (Honestly, I hadn’t heard of perennial Trifid before Price’s poem “One Silver Vandoren Optimum Ligature”.)

Price utilizes her vocabulary to create vivid imagery and a soothing rhythm which is pleasant to the ear when read aloud. (It also helped to calm down Bubba when he was refusing to settle down for the night.) One of my favorite poems, “Ode to Jack”, embodies this beauty of imagery and sound:

Ode to Jack

Nocturnal hare on the barren desert ground

Acutest ears, alert to every sound

Agouti dorsal battledress of fur

On creamy, whitest legs, O saboteur

Of juniper, sweet clover, cactus feed

Sleep softly now on coriander seed,

The images are on the same level as Robert Frost, and the rhythm reminds me greatly of poems such as “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”. Price’s poems are hypnotic, which allowed me to escape from my own problems for a while, no matter how brief a time it was.

In addition to “Ode to Jack”, my favorite Price poems are “On Passion” and “Clearing”, which was probably because they both relate directly to my own experiences. “On Passion” depicts the passion with which the narrator’s mother sewed and how that passion parallels the narrator’s passion for writing. “Clearing” discusses the narrator’s crowded and cluttered mind and how writing poetry acts as a clearing of this mess. I have an affinity for poems on writing, but “Clearing” speaks to me on a personal level, especially the first verse:

My head has only

so much space.

So many songs.

So many words.

So many kingdoms.

Stumbling blind.

I often say that it’s Hell inside my head because so much goes on in there at once, but Price has put this feelings to words better than I ever have.

If you’re looking for rhyming poetry or poetry which follows a certain form, this collection is not for you. Some of the lines rhyme, yes, but Price does not rely on established rhyming patterns or verse styles. Instead, she depends on her own ear, her own heart, and her own beat which, to me, is the sign of a truly wonderful poet in the modern era. I have to agree with an assertion made by Ron Rash in the forward, “She is clearly one of our state’s [North Carolina’s] best poets, and I hope this book gains her a wide and appreciative audience.” I highly recommend her work for poetry fans and those who love home-spun tales from rural areas. I can’t wait to see where Price’s poetry takes her next.

You can find Bent in paperback on Amazon, or you can order it through Price’s website while also learning more about the poet herself. Also be sure to check out T.A. Price’s Facebook page for more information and updates on her future work.

Do you know of any books I should read? Want your work reviewed on this blog? E-mail me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com or message me on Fiverr and we can arrange something.