A Stillness Nearly Mineral: a Review of Robert Gibb' s New Poetry Collection Sightlines. Vox Populi

https://voxpopulisphere.com/2021/04/16/jason-irwin-a-stillness-nearly-mineral/?fbclid=IwAR3CmkXc-CidVF56oQZl0vUnRJcSK_Roy4p1GtpzQOYZsOKPt_ZEuRH7sNE 

Review of Kevin Pilkington's Playing Poker With Tennessee Williams

 

https://www.kevinpilk.com/

https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/playing-poker-with-tennessee-wiliams/

If you're a fan of Kevin Pilkington's poetry like I am, you won't be suprised to find that Playing Poker With Tennessee Williams, his new collection, is full of quirky, self-depricating humor, as well as grit and tenderness. Open to any page and step inside Pilkington's surreal world, a world where the city is a fisherman with a club in his hand, a world where all the bridges appear small enough to fit on a table, an old Greek fruit-seller speaks with English so broken even tape and glue won't fix it, a world where the speaker hears Mingus in the car horns of rush hour taffic, learns forgein languages from cab drivers, discovers roses inside a pomegranate, and sees the image of his father in the ruins of a burned-out church.

In "Not Asking for Much," a ode and prayer for a pademic stricken New York, the speaker expresses the collected and individual stress and grief brought about by a year of lockdown, illness and death.

A hotspot used to mean a trendy restaurant
downtown where I could never get a table.
Now the entire city is a hotspot where there
are no empty beds in any hospital that is filled
with the sick and dying....

"I am not asking for much," the speaker cries, "I would give anything really, just about anything if I could simlply walk up to you and shake your hand."

Other poems also speak of illness and death like "At the Other End of the Hall," where a dying grandmother resembles a pirate flag resting against a pillow to the young narrator. "Staring the way a novel does that no one will ever open, no one will ever read again."

Beisdes the grief and uncertainty there are also poems full of humor and longing. In "Uside Down" the narrator drives through the night and ends up in a town "somewhere between Dylan and Sprngsteen," and finds himself sitting in a 1950's diner so hungry that he orders "the last five days back and over easy," from a waitress who tells him "It would make more sense to get the entire week for an extra two bucks that came with a side of bacon."

In the end, these are all love poems, even for the grandfather who never visited much and puffed on his cigar until the smoke flowed "straight up from hell."

One of my favorites, and this book is full of favorites, is "Black Coffee and Sermons," where inside Saint John's church it's all showbiz. The statues of saints are superheros, the candles line up like the Rocketts, and the sermons are Seinfled episodes spoken by a God "who sounds more like Gregory Peck every visit."

It's the last stanza that to me, that sums up this powerful collection and in many ways sums up Kevin Pilkington himself. For as long as I've known him he's always been encouraging, always had something positive and insightful to say, even in times of uncertaintly and grief. In the end, maybe that's the only way we can live and love -- the only way we can truly survive.

Don't forget to give thanks for
the woman who loves you and hasn't
yet realized her mistake yet.

and later: "Never stay too long...time for these statues is a cup of black coffee...who want you to forget you are alone, lost and on your knees."

Please, buy this book, read it again and again, savor its sweetness as well as its sorrow.