1 review for A Little Instability Without Birds by D.R. James
Rated 5 out of 5
D. R. James –
In eighth grade science, where I learned to draw contour maps that reflect the nuances, subtle twists and turns in land elevations, a whole new way of perceiving the world was revealed to me. Reading the emotionally honest and brilliantly realized poems in D. R. James’s chapbook, A Little Instability without Birds, I experienced a similar epiphany. The friendly, gently self-mocking author-guide in these syntactically scintillating poems leads us up and around switchbacks, hairpin turns, through surprise intersections, while never letting go our hands: “Despite this near-miss at late love, that the last quarter-inch could not have slid down like a pane shattering for joy, my old sorrows roll over in their fetching, gray failure, sigh, ‘It’s morning,’ and all the silly feelings believe them.” Much as the verbal dexterity and philosophical perspicacity of these musings may, at first, trick you into suspecting otherwise, the speaker never lets himself off easy—he never ducks behind his own sharp intelligence, or leads the reader anywhere but home: these poems hike straight into the heart of our human-ness. —Priscilla Atkins
D. R. James –
In eighth grade science, where I learned to draw contour maps that reflect the nuances, subtle twists and turns in land elevations, a whole new way of perceiving the world was revealed to me. Reading the emotionally honest and brilliantly realized poems in D. R. James’s chapbook, A Little Instability without Birds, I experienced a similar epiphany. The friendly, gently self-mocking author-guide in these syntactically scintillating poems leads us up and around switchbacks, hairpin turns, through surprise intersections, while never letting go our hands: “Despite this near-miss at late love, that the last quarter-inch could not have slid down like a pane shattering for joy, my old sorrows roll over in their fetching, gray failure, sigh, ‘It’s morning,’ and all the silly feelings believe them.” Much as the verbal dexterity and philosophical perspicacity of these musings may, at first, trick you into suspecting otherwise, the speaker never lets himself off easy—he never ducks behind his own sharp intelligence, or leads the reader anywhere but home: these poems hike straight into the heart of our human-ness. —Priscilla Atkins