REFLECTIONS IN A SMOKING MIRROR Poems of Mexico & Belize
Paul Pines
Dos Madres Press 2011
ISBN 1-933675-60-2
To hear Paul Pines interviewed on WAMC about this book <click here>
Review
from dougholder.blogspot.com
Many of the poems seem to take place when seafaring
men jump out of their boats with sword in hand, ready to conquer
the enemy with the clash of weapons and political demise. Someone
has to lose but it is not the verse. These poems are similar to a
Keith Jarret Concert. They can rip your heart out and leave the reader
defenseless. So we have the ancients and the jazz musician combo:
“...Ollin
saw him coming
and warned his orchestra
-when the wind speaks
don't answer or you're lost
Robed in yellow red & green
they sat in silence...
until the Wind
began to sing
and they couldn't help
but accompany him
the above poem is a hymn that traverses the early story telling, chorus
and ancients collide on the page with a combination of mighty warrior
and old hags:
“a hag among young whores”
or
“descended
to find Mother Earth
a many – limbed monster
moving over water...”
Ahh. Not much changes. We kill and confiscate, claim as our own
the spoils of war and his 'him' dominates:
“Two days
after Blizean Independence
and almost all foreign visitors
have left...
in fact
there were so many
a West Indian P.M. Kept asking
where the Belizeans were
(many of whom had been reduced
to peeping through the fence)
It rained on Saturday
as the Belizean flag was raised
to a 21 gun salute
fired by a frigate
off shore
but the firework display
was scrubbed
after attempts to light it
failed
and it was clear
most of the population
had stayed home...
The poems are well written, informative and many readers will
revel in their myth and reality:
“...while Carib girls pace
the streets
coal black
in tight slacks
hair in corn-rows
smile at me
by the River Front Hotel
where I wait for the truck
to Mango Creek...”
Review
from sugarmule.com "Two book reviews by Cameron Scott"In his new collection of poems and narratives, “Reflections in a Smoking Mirror,” Paul Pines writes from the elusive edge of cultures, landscapes, and people during times of change. While conquest and revolution might be considered main themes, a deeper personal thread runs though this assortment of historically based stories, poems, and personal poems.
While Pines is writing about very specific places and time periods in Mexico and Belize, poems like “Restaurant Villa Hermosa” and “Punta Gorda” reveal the human condition so powerfully well I sometimes feel like I could be reading about the neighbors next door.
In “Restaurant Villa Hermosa” Pines writes the following of La Duena, the cashier: “with the memory/ of loveliness/ she pins back her hair:// she knows that feelings become extinct/ when we cease to use them// how we change as creatures/ once they are gone.” In these lines Pines captures that “elusive edge” couched in a simple tip of the hat towards growing old.
In another poem “Punta Gorda,” Pines writes “Now a new generation has sprung/ from Cat Landing// to find/ a way out//or discover/there’s no escape/ from a place.” A succinct stab at humanity’s teenage years? Pretty much a direct hit.
What is perhaps strangest for me as a reader and also what lends a mirrored and smoky depth to this collection are the historical contexts Pines writes from. In his afterward of the second section of his book “My Name is Nakuk Pech,” Pines writes “Nakuk’s CHRONICA is a personal and cultural swan song.// In this version of it, I’ve tried to capture his voice.” And earlier in the afterward: “…we sense the fragmentation of a once great civilization, the tensions between feudal families that had undermined it by the time the Spanish came.”
Overall, this is a collection worth returning to. Perhaps it is because I keep finding new layers of meaning couched between lines. Maybe it is because poems like “Restaurant Villa Hermosa,” “Vectors,” “Reflections in a Smoking Mirror,” and “Birds of Belize II” grab hold of me and don’t let me go. But mostly, I keep returning to “Reflections in a Smoking Mirror” because I just enjoy the way Pines writes.
