SOUL SONGS -- COMMENTS BY THE LATE KNUTE SKINNER

 


Comments by Knute Skinner

A prominent subject in Soul Songs is love, which Kieran Beville treats in various ways. In the poem, “A New Day,” we are told that “Though her heart was brittle as dried twigs/ the day brought a blessing to her lips/ when she was woken with a kiss.”

But love can lead to disappointment, as is shown vividly in “Discarded Things.” Here the speaker has returned to a house he once shared with his lover. What he finds there are vivid symbols of their time together. There’s a print upon a wall but, more tellingly, he finds a tube of lipstick on the ground “like a spent cartridge/ the bullet of your goodbye still lodged in my chest.”

In “First Kiss” the problem is not incompatibility. It is the effects of time: “We are quietly growing old,” says a speaker, but “the stars were within our grasp/ the night of our first kiss.”

An especially disquieting view of love appears in “Angel of Death (COVID-19).” Here a victim of the angel pleads that he should be spared. “Can you pass me by,” he begs, “for I have debts of love to pay?”

“Your time has come,” is the Angel’s curt response.

Not all of the poems deal with love, however, and there is a touch of both the exotic and the humorous in “Bazaar.” In this poem a visitor to Kolkata is offered a guide to Big Bazaar. There, instead of vendors offering exotic spices and fabrics, his guide proudly shows him the main attraction: a large modern supermarket.

But repeatedly, the poems do turn to aspects of love. In “Railway Walk” a couple

…walked the railway line…

There was rhythm and our hearts rhymed

as conversation kept pace.”

…

I was yours then and you were mine

and our train of thought was one.

But when the clouds had scattered

you, too, were gone.

 

An especially touching poem is “Remembering Dad.” Here the speaker is distracted from a book of poetry by a vision of his father, alive and walking barefoot along a beach. “I wanted,” he tells us, “to go to him and say, ‘I love you, Dad.’”

But I didn’t and I don’t know why.

Maybe it was because we were men.

            We didn’t say such things back then.

 

            Kieran Beville is the author of varied books of nonfiction, a novel, and another book of poetry, Fool’s Gold.  Soul Songs will be a fine addition to his reputation.           

 

Knute Skinner

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