Apr 30 2008
The Poets: A Voice in the Night – GeorgeAnne Smith (PublishAmerica, LLLP)
Life, 24/7, is the topic of GeorgeAnne Smith’s first book of poetry, and each reader who walks through this book’s pages will find something – someone – or somewhere they can relate to.
From spiritual meditations to reminicising about family get-togethers; from love lost to hope found; from grocery trips to baseball games, she catches episodes from life in her wide net and hauls them on board – a bounty to be shared with readers who love poetry about Main Street U.S.A. and it’s many off roads.
The book’s strength lies in its ability to convey spiritual awakenings in a plain, heartfelt manner. These spiritual poems resonate on many levels and will cause the reader to reflect on his or her own personal journey on this planet and how it relates to the big picture.
An example is the poem Bestow upon Me where she illuminates the need for patience in life with the line…
Fill my needs of a humble kind
But in Your time, and not in mine
Another poem, Within You, challenges us to awaken ourselves to the opportunity that is this world…that only by stepping forth each day with gratitude for the world around us will we ever truly live a life without regrets…
If you have it within you,
the world’s at your feet
You will have no regrets
as you journey new streets
The book is strongest when it deals with the big issues and themes of life – love, lost love, eternity, redemption, and thanksgiving.
The poem I Miss You So, in a plain and simple manner, evokes the unspoken yearning
many people harbor for a lover no longer there. She relates the ever present feelings that exist even after much time has passed with the words…
You’re even in my cup of coffee,
staring back with that look of love
The book loses some of its power in the poems that seem to relate mundane life experiences such as a mouse living in a clothes hamper; attending a ballgame; or dealing with door-to-door solicitors/salespeople.
Often times the rhyming schemes seemed forced which tend to take away the natural voice of the author, but at the same time the messages of the poems still shine, causing one to contemplate the issues being dealt with.
As a first book of poetry there is much to enjoy in this book. The writer writes with confidence in her chosen themes and is not afraid to bare her deepest emotions and secret thoughts.
A Voice in the Night is not a pretentious book. Where many books of poetry take vagueness and freedom from poetic constraint to the extreme – sacrificing coherence for intellectual exclusivity- this book does not.
It is fluid in its thoughts and filled with warmth…from the heart…as plain and simple and genuine as a pot of coffee brewing on a kitchen countertop.
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