Reviews

Why Elephants No Longer Communicate In Greek by Timons Esaias

mary_soon_lee's review

4.0

Initial disclaimer: I know the author. That said, I like this poetry collection very much. I had naively planned to write comments about the poems that I particularly admired and liked, but, since I annotated over forty poems as especially fine, I shall have to be more discriminating. Cavalierly clumping poems into groups, there were six poems with a light frivolous flavor that I loved: "Hello," "Carnegie Library," "Nudge," "Poetry Defined," "Rubaiyat LXXI, Revised," and "Appropriate Salutaions." All excellently executed. There are science fiction poems and science poems, including "Checklist," "A Fire on Ganymede," and the beautiful "A Universe." There are many excellent romantic-relationship poems, with repeated themes of the narrator reflecting on his love being rejected or undervalued. My favorite of these was "For Love, This Cup," which is specific yet universal, tender, and haunting. Two other relationship poems, though not romantic relationship poems, also stood out to me: "But will they come when you do call for them?" which is about the narrator's parents, and "Photonic Relationships," which is about his brother. (At least, that is how the poems are presented, but they may be fictitious rather than autobiographical.) One poem with a clearly invented first-person narrator, "All the Important People #2," deals with ageing, and is tender and moving and among my favorites in the book. Many of the poems are clever; many exhibit the author's breadth of knowledge. Some, even though I may like them, remain at least partially cryptic to me, including the opening poem "All the Important People #5." (I find many poems cryptic, so this may reflect upon me rather than upon the poems.) Even though I found it somewhat cryptic, I loved the poem "At the Mountain Inn, Shaded by Broken Pines," and wished there were more in that voice or world. The endings of the poems are often wonderful, sometimes turning the poem in a new direction, for example the skillful and witty "Supplementary" shifts (for me) toward yearning in the closing two stanzas. There are two variants on the title poem, both of which I liked very much, but the second slightly the more, because of its final four-word stanza. Quite a few poems are pointed, and I particularly liked both the points being made and how that was achieved in "We Used To Have Faces" and "Famous Poet, Rant, Point of Order." A very fine collection.

stevendedalus's review

4.0

A lovely collection of everyday, plain-language poems, mostly witty wry observations and a few deeper delves.

The broken heart love poems are a bit maudlin but the odes to urban life and the small pleasures in the day are where it really shines.