Laurie Soriano’s poetry collection, Catalina, published by Lummox Press, was the unanimous choice of the voting members as the winner of the 2011 Indie Lit Awards in the Poetry category. Catalina exemplifies everything I love in a poetry collection. While I have no idea whether these poems are autobiographical, it certainly seems as though Soriano exposes her soul in these stanzas. They affected me deeply with their heaviness and their beauty.
The poems are broken up into four sections, with the first two seeming to focus mainly on childhood. In “Parents,” she paints a portrait of a troubled marriage, alcoholism, and abuse.
Then there was the drinking,
the reason we got hit
before bedtime, the reason we lay alone
shivering in our beds at unreasonable hours
hearing them murder each other, over and over,
leaving puddles of failure and self-pity
all over the living room. (page 21)
There is a haunting quality to the poems in which the narrator remembers her childhood, but the last two sections of the book focus on a happier time, when she is married with children. Yet, emphasizing how the past never leaves us and has made us who we are, the moments of joy and becoming one with nature are contrasted with darker poems dealing with death. Catalina takes readers on a journey as Soriano flees her childhood in Connecticut and embarks on a new life in California, the poems progressing from a painful time to one in which she has come to terms with things.
I think I loved Catalina so much because the poems spoke to me, and I could understand where she was coming from as she described a troubled childhood, falling in love, becoming a mother, and watching her children grow. “Sweet Bean” is beautiful in its imagery as she describes her daughter’s transition from girl to woman.
The peaceful nipples wake up and announce
pinkly the parade of hormones is here,
the breasts bloom into little pillows,
your belly flattens, the waist carves itself,
and suddenly you have a colt’s legs,
big feet, and a supple back that someone
ought to paint a picture of. (page 72)
My favorite poem in the collection is “Impatiens,” in which the narrator tells her lover that she has met someone else, the man who would become her husband and the father of her children, and she describes him as a flower. The poem is beautiful in its intensity, perfectly describing the beginnings of true love though it is written after they have already been together for years. When you finish this poem, you know in your bones that her leaving this other man was the right thing to do and that somehow he understood.
The man is simple like the earth, loamy, radiant
and when my eyes behold his face,
the confident smooth masculine skin gives way
to the flashes of color that no one deserves
that are his eyes, flashing that way
because of me. (page 68)
Catalina has become my favorite contemporary poetry collection because I could relate to the experiences Soriano describes in these poems. Soriano’s blend of narration and poetic language are perfect. The poems are subtle, yet at the same time they are intense, intimate, and sensual. The themes of love and loss, pain and joy, birth and death are ones we can all relate to, and her images are vivid yet never too much. From here on out, whenever someone tells me they don’t read poetry because they can’t understand it or it doesn’t speak to them, I will encourage them to read this collection.
**The Indie Lit Awards poetry board had the opportunity to interview Laurie Soriano. I hope you’ll take the time to check it out!**
Disclosure: I received a copy of Catalina from Lummox Press as part of the voting process for the Indie Lit Awards. I am an IndieBound affiliate and an Amazon associate.
© 2012 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.
I’ll be posting my review for this one next week. I loved this collection and I’m so glad that we all agreed.
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Me, too. Looking forward to your thoughts.
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It’s a volume with poems I wanted to send to people and say “this, this is how it is.” Reading the poems was like reading through Hallmark cards in the store and every once in a while picking one out, thinking “yes, this is what I mean!” I think it was Alexander Pope who said good poetry consists of “what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”
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Well said, Jeanne!
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POETRY!! This is a fabulous review. I have a hard time reviewing poetry and this is an excellent example of how to do so, Thank you.
and it looks like you covered a lot of challenges with this post?
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Thanks, Care. That means a lot to me. I’m always nervous when I post poetry reviews because I don’t take an academic approach to them, not that you need to. I just feel so amateurish, LOL.
I posted about WWI poetry the other day and will be reviewing the rest of the Indie Lit Awards poetry books throughout National Poetry Month.
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I can’t wait to dive into this one. Your review is wonderful, Anna!
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Thanks, Beth. I hope you love it as much as I do!
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I agree that this book of verse sounds very worthwhile. Love the title too. and the poems you chose to quote.
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There were so many quotable poems in the collection. You should see all the notes I jotted in the margins while reading!
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Wow those are quite striking poems! Thanks for introducing us to this writer!
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I couldn’t get enough of her poems. She’s the first contemporary poet whose work really, really spoke to me.
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I haven’t really explore much comtemporary poetry. I’m glad that you really enjoyed this collection.
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I’d read a few contemporary collections in recent years, so I was glad that the Indie Lit Awards “forced” me to read 5. It really opened my eyes to what’s out there right now.
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I am sort of a newbie at poetry, but this one really appeals to me because of its depth and emotion.
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I think this is a perfect book for someone who’s new to poetry!
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It sounds like a collection worth checking out.
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I hope you give it a try!
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I’m not much of a poetry reader, but your review has really done this book justice.
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Thanks, Laura! That means a lot to me.
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Hm…eh, I still like the WWI poets more
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Me, too, but Soriano is my favorite contemporary poet right now.
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Oh how I love poetry and this sounds like a great contemporary poetry collection. Thanks for sharing 🙂
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I think you would really like this collection. Hope you give it a try.
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this reminds me a bit of the poetry of Nuala Ní Chonchúir
My Thighs are Cold
My thighs are cold.
As is the pucked sag of my belly,
a cool appendage hanging like
a symbiotic twin from my waist,
with two sons-worth of skin stretch.
My fingers are cold.
As are my toes, their ten plus ten
equalling twenty long digits
that grapple at warmth with
a cadaver’s marblous grip.
Until my morning bed.
There, heat oozes like piety
to every cranny, making
a smug bitch of me, a pup
languishing in self-made heat.
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It is pretty to similar to that poem. Thanks for sharing!
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I really enjoyed this review of Catalina. I’m one of those people who often have a hard time connecting with poetry. However, the excerpts you posted here were crystal clear and I could fully understand and appreciate them!!! Beautiful poetry and I’m interested to read this collection!
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It’s very rare that I connect so much with an entire collection. I really hope you give it a try.
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Thank you for writing such a great review of this book! As a publisher (Lummox Press), I apreciate a well-crafted review. I hope that your readers will indeed go out and buy a copy of Catalina (I personally think that it is a great example of contemporary poetry, not to mention just one of a number of great poetry collections published by Lummox Press)! I invite your readers to come by Lummox and see some of the other books in our catalog. http://www.lummoxpress.com
Thanks again
RD Armstrong
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You’re welcome!
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