Poetry comes in a myriad form. If your taste is melancholy, if you want your poetry to bleed, you'll need to get your hands on I Am A War.
I Am A War is a collection of poems on loss, haunting, shrinking in the light, and then, despite yourself, growing.
Intensely personal, these poems don't need to apologize for being rawer than sushi, deeper than any thrown stone, almost feral. They exist because shit happens and despite that, we survive. If you'd been through the same, you'd be trying to write like this, but it's not something just anyone can do. Kindra M. Austin can.
Austin's uncompromising, unapologetic, direct style, belies her talent as a technically brilliant writer. She's intensely smart, and able to write in many different genres, but my personal favorite is when she puts all her varied abilities down and just writes her damn heart out.
When you put love, loss and pain together and create a road, then along the way you will hear these poems, howled into the wind, blown like pollen through our souls, echoing the way memory does, when you need it to go and it never truly does.
The reverse of love is hate, the reverse of love is alone. When you have love and lost, you contain within you, a mixture of resentment and loss, blended with an acute sense of being consciously alone. Only love can bring you back from the brink, but how can you ever trust again? And yet we do, we keep putting ourselves back together. Kindra M. Austin is a story teller in her poetry, she describes how we survive even when we think we aren't able to.
Survival isn't always tidy, more often it's a dirty, ugly, screaming creature. Most of us run from the truth and cover it over with silence. A poet's role is to be that voice we all have in some form, to speak truths and not disguise it out of fear. In that sense, a poet is the bravest creature out there.
The code of pain is a private affair, and maybe that's half the problem. We go around grieving with no way to get that grief OUT. Poetry has always been a realm for discovery and sharing experience, but even there, we excessively edit our realities. When a poet has the gravitas to defy that and cry out, we should all listen.
Poets are often so easily dismissed when they stay in the safe zone. Austin has never been a safe writer, she may do that in her day-to-day, but as a writer, she'll take her beating heart out and offer you the gore. This isn't for pity, but to remind us all, pain leaves scars, tragedy doesn't go away after a day or two, life can be a bitter pill. Instead of negative, this reminds us why caring and giving a damn is so essential. The power of the female. The power of pain to transform. The necessity of going on the journey, bravely and without compromise.
I don't want cold, life-less poetry. I want my poetry to steam and flinch on the plate I don't want poetry to tiptoe around, or fall asleep reading. I want poetry that will keep me awake, get me thinking, get me feeling. If I wanted something safe, I would read a Louise Hay book. I don't want to fix myself; I want to understand myself. Give me truth or let me die. I Am A War is in battle dress with strung bow. This is the only way I want my poetry.
