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angelsmomreads's review
4.0
As posted in my new review [email protected]
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I was privileged to be able to review Dan Provost's new book Playing Croquet In A Snowstorm Wearing Shortpants..He is a writer that has the ability to say more in a dozen words than the majority of writers struggle to convey in a hundred pages. In these pages the majority of the poems are in five lines or less. Essentially a haiku, without the syllable count. There are pages that make you laugh out loud ; and others the briefest breath of time is captured with such elegance . These are raw thoughts that the average human never takes the time to ponder. In 42 pages Dan Provost captured the essence of masculinity ; for to be a man isn't just the grit blood and bone left under the Friday night lights; or a battlefield, to be a man is to lay your soul bare with all its vulnerability and unloading it like a machine gun on a page till no one is left standing.
Family Reunion
The silent encounters at 4 am
with the ghosts of my father, mother, and sister
usually end up with me realizing
I failed at love
When I had the chance.
How many of us woke up night after night during 2020 wanting to talk to a parent that was no longer there, to hold a person we had lost, to reclaim time that we didn't savor every instant of when we had the chance? There is a truth and realism in each line, 4 am used to be that golden hour for me , now it comes as a stark realization that none of us are living to our absolute capability. Dan Provost tells us exactly this on page 36 " Welcome to the land of ponder. The land of action is waiting to be recognized." So stop making excuses; you want to write? Pick up your pen, take out your phone and write in notes, what ever you need to do to get those ideas on paper, submit to a journal, a magazine a publisher ; but keep writing.
Hurry Up
I write these words at a frantic pace
mourners outside
my window
Cannot see me catatonically laughing at them
In 2020 our homes became a sanctuary of safety, and as all double edged swords are the place that we longed to be "free" from, to be able to venture forth at Christmas shopping without fear that Covid 19 would be among our bags of Christmas gifts. In multiple pages the writer remembers the relatives we only half knew , parties in taverns, and Christmas wonder. In 2020 we barely had the energy to think about parties, decorating, and sitting to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" seemed like a redundant tragedy when for so many hooked to ventilators. While there was absolutely nothing "wonderful" about this season, on page 35 Dan reminds us on December 26th if we do not go about the business of living, we will only have ourselves to regret not doing more, and stop being Scrooge and loving our families while we have the chance. " Welcome to the land of ponder. The Land of action is waiting to be recognized." Our kids were still waiting for Santa, our adult children are still waiting for the magic of the Christmas season to arrive and whether or not part of us died in this dumpster fire of a year we still need to proceed with the business of living. Time waits for no man.
Why?
It is not out of want
that I watch
saddening humanity converse
in Gorham Park
about the lack of coffee and food
It is out of wonder
The US is one of the richest countries in the world, and there is no reason anyone should be going hungry. There is no reason we need to have empty shelves in our stores, whether it is because the person who was supposed to stock the shelf was out sick, or the warehouse workers were sick; there are millions of people out of work. I thought about this poem as I drove my son to work today. He works for Publix one of the biggest supermarket chains in the Southeast. Today he starts at 9 am in Produce, and will finish his day cleaning the floors after the store closes. His management made sure that this is not overtime, he will have just short of 40 hours for the week. Essentially he is doing the job of two workers, and they wouldn't give him a raise this past quarter not because of his job performance, but for other meaningless details . This is why our nation is hungry, there is no value in the American worker. Dan Provost brings to each page the human experience in stark , relative terms; with this book you will not forget how you felt in the year 2020.