Review by akruser13 -- The Immigrant's Lament
-
akruser13
- Posts: 4
- Joined: 09 Jun 2017, 15:27
- Currently Reading: Apollo's Raven
- Bookshelf Size: 6
- Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-akruser13.html
- Latest Review: "The Immigrant's Lament" by Mois benarroch
Review by akruser13 -- The Immigrant's Lament
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Immigrant's Lament" by Mois benarroch.]
3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
If you like works that are highly stream-of-conscious, and you don't mind untraditional poetry formats, The Immigrant's Lament by Mois Benarroch might be the perfect book for you.
In what may at first seem like just a list of random author thoughts set in poem form, as you dive into page after page of memories and thoughts and emotions, you quickly find yourself immersed in an organized and rather relatable autobiography. No, not relatable on the surface sense of being able to empathize with a man leaving his life in Morocco to venture to Israel and then around the world, but in the sense that he is able to transform his recollections of doubts and hardships from his specific life experiences into something that most people can relate to on a comparable level, and he manages to do it all through poetry.
Starting from his childhood, Benarroch uses an interesting poetic style of simply bombarding the reader with thoughts, long lines of memory interjected with his own commentary about said memories, weaving stories told in feelings rather than in details. His words all bleed into one another with almost no punctuation and little use of capitalization, the line breaks being the only means of giving you time to pause between one event to the next. It seems like this should be jarring, but it actually flows rather nicely in its own rhythm that is easy to follow.
From there we're taken into a format that is more recognizable to the average poetry reader - short pieces broken up into even shorter stanzas. I like to think this was done intentionally to transition the reader from the chaos of childhood, displaying the growth of the author as he matures into thoughts mostly of love and marriage and having children, along with concerns over the world, struggles with religion, wars, the economy and other such "adult" topics. It's a more aesthetic format, an almost romantic one that mirrors the average lifespan of a relationship, complete with the moments of perfect infatuation coupled with the shadowed side of irritation and heartbreak and a sometimes need to just escape it all.
The collection ends with a self portrait piece that mimics the style of the first pieces, throwing the reader back into a whirlwind of thoughts that jump from one thing to the next at Benarroch's whimsy. This, I must admit, is where it lost me a little. Not "lost" in a sense that I didn't understand what he was saying, but I did start to lose interest partway through. It's a bit long and a little too rambly for my personal taste, but to amend that, Benarroch does seem to be aware of it and actually adds line about exactly that directly within the poem. It's clearly meant to be a venting place for himself, leaving it entirely up to the reader whether they want to sift through the full piece or abandon it before reaching the end.
Overall, I rather enjoyed the book and easily finished it in one sitting. I love that Benarroch is not afraid to just drop his thoughts on the page exactly how he feels them, and isn't inclined to try to turn everything into a flowery metaphor that half the world won't understand. There were a few things I found that turned me away from giving the book a perfect score though, the least of which were some of the typos I discovered here and there.
One turnoff was a recycling of lines from one poem to the next. For instance, there's a poem titled "Right or Wrong," the entirety of which was actually used as the last several lines in a poem just two pages before it. And there was another line that appeared in an early poem that I thought was so powerful then, but then it appeared word for word in a different poem near the end of the book. While I fully understand the attachment a writer can have towards a perfect sentence or line or idea, it's perfect because of its uniqueness, and therefore should remain one of a kind, only being used once so it can shine on its own. It's a bit egotistical to place the same writing into several pieces, which is doubly ironic in this particular case because Benarroch writes directly into his poetry how he despises the egotistical nature of other poets.
The other thing that I found...not bad by any means because I actually really loved the poem itself, but it seemed to interrupt the flow of the book's themes overall, was a piece titled "The Transsexual's Lament." It's just so different in tone and is really the only poem in the entire book that I can note actually steps out of Benarroch's voice, making it slightly jarring in comparison with the others. I would love to see it published as a standalone piece or possibly in a different collection; it just wasn't quite the right fit for everything else going on in this book.
Lastly, and I realize this is mostly my own reader OCD speaking, I dislike that the table of contents comes at the end of the book. I'm accustomed to knowing what I'm reading right from the start with collections like this, so having to go to the end to quick-reference anything was off-putting to me. It's nitpicking, I know, but the table should be at the beginning, and an index (if desired) should be at the end.
With all that in mind, I would still highly recommend this book to anyone who likes poetry, but who wants to read it in blunt thoughts and direct words that still manage to evoke compelling emotions. I give The Immigrant's Lament a 3 out of 4 stars, and will definitely be checking into Benarroch's past and future works to come.
******
The Immigrant's Lament
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Like akruser13's review? Post a comment saying so!
3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
If you like works that are highly stream-of-conscious, and you don't mind untraditional poetry formats, The Immigrant's Lament by Mois Benarroch might be the perfect book for you.
In what may at first seem like just a list of random author thoughts set in poem form, as you dive into page after page of memories and thoughts and emotions, you quickly find yourself immersed in an organized and rather relatable autobiography. No, not relatable on the surface sense of being able to empathize with a man leaving his life in Morocco to venture to Israel and then around the world, but in the sense that he is able to transform his recollections of doubts and hardships from his specific life experiences into something that most people can relate to on a comparable level, and he manages to do it all through poetry.
Starting from his childhood, Benarroch uses an interesting poetic style of simply bombarding the reader with thoughts, long lines of memory interjected with his own commentary about said memories, weaving stories told in feelings rather than in details. His words all bleed into one another with almost no punctuation and little use of capitalization, the line breaks being the only means of giving you time to pause between one event to the next. It seems like this should be jarring, but it actually flows rather nicely in its own rhythm that is easy to follow.
From there we're taken into a format that is more recognizable to the average poetry reader - short pieces broken up into even shorter stanzas. I like to think this was done intentionally to transition the reader from the chaos of childhood, displaying the growth of the author as he matures into thoughts mostly of love and marriage and having children, along with concerns over the world, struggles with religion, wars, the economy and other such "adult" topics. It's a more aesthetic format, an almost romantic one that mirrors the average lifespan of a relationship, complete with the moments of perfect infatuation coupled with the shadowed side of irritation and heartbreak and a sometimes need to just escape it all.
The collection ends with a self portrait piece that mimics the style of the first pieces, throwing the reader back into a whirlwind of thoughts that jump from one thing to the next at Benarroch's whimsy. This, I must admit, is where it lost me a little. Not "lost" in a sense that I didn't understand what he was saying, but I did start to lose interest partway through. It's a bit long and a little too rambly for my personal taste, but to amend that, Benarroch does seem to be aware of it and actually adds line about exactly that directly within the poem. It's clearly meant to be a venting place for himself, leaving it entirely up to the reader whether they want to sift through the full piece or abandon it before reaching the end.
Overall, I rather enjoyed the book and easily finished it in one sitting. I love that Benarroch is not afraid to just drop his thoughts on the page exactly how he feels them, and isn't inclined to try to turn everything into a flowery metaphor that half the world won't understand. There were a few things I found that turned me away from giving the book a perfect score though, the least of which were some of the typos I discovered here and there.
One turnoff was a recycling of lines from one poem to the next. For instance, there's a poem titled "Right or Wrong," the entirety of which was actually used as the last several lines in a poem just two pages before it. And there was another line that appeared in an early poem that I thought was so powerful then, but then it appeared word for word in a different poem near the end of the book. While I fully understand the attachment a writer can have towards a perfect sentence or line or idea, it's perfect because of its uniqueness, and therefore should remain one of a kind, only being used once so it can shine on its own. It's a bit egotistical to place the same writing into several pieces, which is doubly ironic in this particular case because Benarroch writes directly into his poetry how he despises the egotistical nature of other poets.
The other thing that I found...not bad by any means because I actually really loved the poem itself, but it seemed to interrupt the flow of the book's themes overall, was a piece titled "The Transsexual's Lament." It's just so different in tone and is really the only poem in the entire book that I can note actually steps out of Benarroch's voice, making it slightly jarring in comparison with the others. I would love to see it published as a standalone piece or possibly in a different collection; it just wasn't quite the right fit for everything else going on in this book.
Lastly, and I realize this is mostly my own reader OCD speaking, I dislike that the table of contents comes at the end of the book. I'm accustomed to knowing what I'm reading right from the start with collections like this, so having to go to the end to quick-reference anything was off-putting to me. It's nitpicking, I know, but the table should be at the beginning, and an index (if desired) should be at the end.
With all that in mind, I would still highly recommend this book to anyone who likes poetry, but who wants to read it in blunt thoughts and direct words that still manage to evoke compelling emotions. I give The Immigrant's Lament a 3 out of 4 stars, and will definitely be checking into Benarroch's past and future works to come.
******
The Immigrant's Lament
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Like akruser13's review? Post a comment saying so!
Latest Review: "The Immigrant's Lament" by Mois benarroch
