Belinda’s Review of "Compositions on Compassion and Other Emotions" by Bob McNeil

 

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"Compositions on Compassion and Other Emotions" by Bob McNeil is a profound and multifaceted exploration of themes such as love, hope, healing, and the complex nature of mortality. Written during a pivotal period in McNeil's life, marked by a life-threatening health crisis, the collection reflects a deep introspection born out of confronting his own fragility. Rather than dwelling solely on despair, McNeil crafts a narrative that embraces the importance of compassion and the pursuit of a more loving world.

The book comprises essays, illustrations, poems, and short stories, creating a rich tapestry of emotional expression. McNeil’s writing invites readers to navigate the intricacies of human experience, from the joys of affectionate connections to the painful reality of loss. In pieces like "What Love Wrote" and "My Heart's Unthwarted Sentiment," he articulates the necessity of love in navigating life’s hardships, suggesting that genuine affection is both a refuge and a source of strength. The work is characterized by a tone that oscillates between solemnity and hope, reflecting McNeil's understanding that vulnerability can lead to profound personal growth.

A significant aspect of McNeil's collection is its exploration of societal issues. He does not shy away from addressing the systemic challenges faced by marginalized communities. Poems such as "A Mouse and the Lack of Housing" serve as poignant critiques of societal neglect and indifference towards those who are homeless. Through these reflections, McNeil emphasizes the need for social change and the importance of community in combating these injustices. By intertwining personal narratives with broader social commentary, he elevates the emotional impact of his work, urging readers to recognize and address the struggles of others.

Additionally, McNeil’s contemplations on mortality permeate the collection, prompting introspection about life and legacy. In pieces like "Sentiments Before Residence in the Firmament," he encourages readers to embrace their emotions and relationships fully, underscoring the fleeting nature of existence. His reflections on ancestry and familial bonds in "Praise My Forebears" and "A Mantra for Babas" further highlight the resilience found in one’s heritage, encouraging a deep appreciation for the journey of life.

Bob McNeil, a seasoned writer and spoken word artist with previous works such as "Lyrics of Mature Hearts," brings a unique voice to this collection. His commitment to social causes is evident, as a portion of the proceeds is directed towards supporting a homeless organization. This dual purpose adds an additional layer of significance to his literary effort, reinforcing the message that art can drive positive change in society.

In conclusion, "Compositions on Compassion and Other Emotions" is a compelling and heartfelt exploration of the human experience. McNeil’s blend of personal reflection, social commentary, and philosophical insight creates a resonant narrative that encourages readers to reflect on their own lives and the world around them. This collection stands as a significant contribution to contemporary literature, offering both solace and empowerment through the lens of compassion and creativity.

Su Zi's Review of LIKE ZEROS, LIKE PEARLS by Lola Haskins

 

The Benefits of Bookfairs 

Local communities hold a variety of events, and perusal of these listings will often yield bookfairs, either as independent events or in conjunction with craft fairs, or other forms of small market. Of course, the literate person ought to attend such events: it does take quite the effort for these solo artists, or small collectives to write the book, have it in handheld form, and then transport to the event, where they hopefully sit all day, waiting for you.  The genres offered at book fairs will vary; author displays often mirrors their genre-- authors of horror might have a display of black cloth, or go as far as to costume; certainly, children’s authors might have a pirate or a puppet; and local history authors can sometimes offer a fascination of research-intensive nonfiction. 

And then, sometimes, there’s a literary author: present because that’s home turf and they are sitting at a table with a stack of books as well. At the 2026 Sunshine State Book Festival, among the half a dozen tables for poetry, there was Lola Haskins. Unquestionably a citizen of the literary community in poetry, Lola was there with many books, including the 2025 Charlotte Lit Press release Like Zeros, Like Pearls, a trade-sized, perfect bound, full-length collection—a volume that includes two pages of acknowledgments and a bibliography.

That the book has “A Modest Bibliography” (71) belies the arc of this work, which is divided into three sections, occasionally adorned with a discrete illustration, and which sometimes cites these sources in the poems of the text. That the poems employ research might remind an astute reader of biographical poems, and these poems are biographical; however, the lives portrayed here are more than marginalized, to many readers these lives are invisible. Haskins addresses the invisibility of these lives in a four-paragraph prose preface that states,” [...] the only time I noticed insects was when they called attention to themselves by being beautifully marked or by attacking me “and then says “suddenly realized that ignoring whole worlds wasn’t okay”. With an epigram from the 14^th Dalai Lama about teaching children to “love the insects”, and much cultural information about the key-to-life species to our life on earth being bees, Haskins dedicated volume causes us to consider immediately what sort of worlds we notice, want to read about, and how that consideration can be meditations in poetry.

The work’s title is the last line of the poem, “Poem Ending with an Image from ‘The Mustard seed Garden Manual of Painting (1782)’ ” and begins with, “Only after the twelve instar are/ the ears of her legs ready to listen” (28). The assonant repetition of “instar are” has both a slant repetition in the poem with the stanzas ending ‘her/her/herself” but echoes with ancestral recognition of Ishar—she of the eight-pointed star, the planet Venus, the Mesopotamian goddess (in a general definition) of love, beauty, sex and war.  That this, and many of the poems in the text, concern themselves with insect reproduction rituals gives the poems here both beauty and a sense of the macabre.

Meditations on the lives of insects throughout time and culture are considered in these poems. In “Cricket, Vietnam”, a single stanza poem of two sentences, we cross both the globe and cultures:

Snowy tree crickets

synchronize their songs

until leaf, branch and core

are one repeating

 tremble. When Yen

was asked

to define moonlight,

in pearl and dim blue

she painted this.

                         (56)

While the poem’s opening lines include four consonant repetitions of  S, the repetition through the poem is on the assonant E of “tree/leaf/repeat” that also includes “crickets/ tremble” and the rhyme of “when Yen” that shifts consideration from sound to color and the meditation of listening to that of painting.

Ekphrastic considerations are fully at play in this work: Haskins begins at personal observation, delves into research, and considers the juxtaposition of lives in each poem. The author’s biography includes collaboration with other artists in music, and it ought to be no surprise thus that the auditory world is a strong element in this work. Haskins has long been a literary light, and the author website has prompt delivery.  As we consider our beleaguered planet, our extreme storms and images of homes washed away, Haskins asks us to consider the other lives, small and without much notice by our gargantuan doings, that are nonetheless cohabitants of our world as well.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.

Jerome Berglund's Review of g emil reutter's DISTANCE TO INFINITY from Alien Buddha Press

 

So far, yet we can taste it...

g emil reutter plots the 'Distance to Infinity'

 

g emil reutter's stunning new collection from Alien Buddha Press, Distance to Infinity is a little red chapbook which will stir the imaginaion and start provoking thought and encouraging ameliorative change before you even open it. For the very subtitle on its cover visible on a table or shelf confronts the reader, citizen and scholar with a bold revelation: "Poets are the voice of the people in times of struggle, times of war, times of oppression", and isn't that the truth! Yet while a shill can be cheaply purchased, credible threats intercepted and turned into controlled opposition who confine their prescriptions to that narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion Chomsky contends debate in a lively manner is permitted exclusively within and relegated to not unlike a 'free speech zone', even so it is rare to locate in any medium or exhibition of creative expression which will be embraced or canonized by the masses or posterity content which does not endorse the causes of fellowship, justice, empathy and understanding, and exceptions to that rule, fluff which does not (looking at you CIA stage-managed abstract expressionism movement, Federal Writer's Project) further integral social and institutional correction should always be scrutinized as highly dubious and suspect.

There are two conflicting schools and viewpoints when it comes to the place of politics in poetry, and it's no great stretch or exaggeration to condemn one (in his principal poem g notes apropos 'the traitors are amongst us') as criminal collaboration, expressly supporting all manner of monstrosity and injustice encoded into our highly problematic status quo and the innumerable errors across history into our tremendously problematic and entrenched present it implicitly supports and condones. For, as national poet laureate Amanda Gorman reminds us, 'all art is political', and Kwame Dawes importantly explains, 'When a poet writes about trees, he is being political [too] both by what he chooses to write about and what he chooses not to write about'. Grace Paley further suggests quite plausibly that 'if a writer says 'this is not political,' it's probably the most political thing that they could be doing.'

Orwell additionally clarified that 'all art is propaganda', and I don't think we should take that necessarily as a criticism (unless it's Triumph of the Will), or in the pejorative sense. For to disrupt and agitate, education, organizing, and encouragement of grassroots, sweeping mobilization is first in order, and literature or its public, economical equivalents in public artworks, placards, trifold brochure (sagaciously Voltaire whispers an aside sotto voce: 'Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It's the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared'), whatever their available equivalents were they played crucial roles in every important social movement of reform and revolt, improvement and abolition throughout history from the dawn of recorded and remembered time.

Just as Pablo Picasso's Guernica tapped into a wellspring of public feelings and the zeitgeist of sentiments of shock and frustration with the horrors of fascism and imperial war, poets from Homer to Pablo Neruda have provided vivid lenses through which the laymen may understand and engage with the distinctive challenges of their day, and there find the seeds of a coarse charted for that long journey homeward towards a better, less fraught and combative future. And while the upper classes may offer more expensive tutelage, laurels and supposed formal accreditation (in the schools of bourgeois thought, philosophy, and praxis) one can always locate more honest, informed, insightful perspectives articulating the everyman and woman's difficulties and yearnings of their day from among their peers in the working classes.

Hence why it is always such a treasured treat and fortunate opportunity when someone from a less privileged background, representing the proletariat and public at large's interests at heart, emerges with great effort improbably to pass along their hard earned wisdom and knowledge. g emil reutter is just such a valuable font of credible subversive mana from below, unearthing troves of treasured constructive critique, and it is fortunate we have the opportunity to reflect upon his revelations thoughtfully as the long and arduous road to 'an endless end' is measured, navigated and by we poor wayfarers cautiously traversed.

I find it so interesting too how some of the keenest, most perceptive voices in the causes of peace and reform, compassion and institutional reimagining come from unexpected backgrounds which afford them unique glimpses into the evils which plague a society from the top trickling down, and the deeply troubling systemic flaws which are hindering their immediate, realistic and possible remedy. Tuskegee Airman put faces, dignity to the civil rights movement, just as Buffalo Soldiers and Navajo code talkers ennobled and vindicated the essential place of people of all colors and creeds within the patchwork of diverse and intersectional america. In the Vietnam war it was returning veterans who truly ratified and proved irrefutable the cries for disarmament, provided chilling testament and firsthand corroboration for the horrors of colonial oppression, and their practice of fragging effectually put an embarrassing end to the atrocity of involuntary conscription. More recently those who served in the middle eastern theater upon returning to ignominious treatment proved integral towards challenging assumptions and the narrative regarding issues of homelessness, addiction, mental health, (our 'flattened cousins' strewn in the gutter which g emil laments in his piece Sweep) and continue to be resounding figures looming large and contributing invaluably to the missions for peace, understanding, and harmony across borders of land and language, and on our own soil no less powerfully.

It's intriguing and highly productive to be gifted a glimpse into the minds and lives of those who spent careers serving and protecting the public as g emil did in his younger years, as that can truly challenge and cut through divisive rhetoric and promote the sort of rainbow coalition and bipartisan solidarity we desperately need as a species and civilization. Some of the best things I've read it recent years curiously originated from colleagues who were employed in law enforcement (Leon Tefft and Tim Roberts have phenomenal recent collections on the subject if you enjoy a haiku) and classical and contemporary poetry and literature both contain no shortage of compassionate progressive personages (from Byron to Archilochos, Camus to Hemingway to Edward Abbey) who draw from wealths of informative adventures to reach their weighty and meaningful conclusions. I have family who worked in uniform and/or served, and in reality you will find no group more frustrated with issues of corruption, desirous of completely reinventing (equitably in a form where they are viewed positively and have a friendly relationship, camaraderie with the public and can wear uniforms with pride, aren't perceived as representing private property alone, cannot be accused of overtly continuing traditions which sprung from practices of slave catching or lining pockets via asset forfeiture, filling informal plantations criminalizing and leasing to bidders marginalized populations) the entire concept, than they in our embattled day and age. Entering the era of increasing demands for divestment and abolition (it's heartening to see, in contrast, with wealthy european republics the state withering as it should, with less inequality and thus associated deviances not resulting prisons being closed and resources, personnel being redirected from chasing robbers to more fulfilling and pleasant activities), there is no demographic who we could better benefit from paying close attention to and including in the conversation (incidentally I highly recommend investigating "the People vs. Billie Holiday" and "Rustin") than they, and I can't recommend enough we take a page out of Fred Hampton's handbook and reject the biased mainstream media and politicians' push to both ostensible ideologic sides and realize we are all brothers and sisters and countrymen and neighbors, and the handful of plutocratic ne'er-do-well keeping us down are not we plebs or those struggling to keep civilization together with duct tape, and if like-minded activists and innovators could win a compassionate accord with the police and military nonviolent amicable inroads towards genuine revolutionary changes and reining in of nefarious abusers might become a legitimate possibility.

Particularly in our unprecedented nadir of the modern era, when free speech and dissent are labeled criminal formally, the news is delivered by thinly veiled state instigators and actors expressly to misinform and befuddle, pit against one another ('hate spew[ing] its volcanic power' as Reutter memorably describes it, which 'somebody is making money' from invariably) the conscientious, caring citizen, it is from the independent observer and advocate, the underground poet and gonzo provocateur or merry prankster whether via podcast (have you heard Super Awkward Funtime?) or self published online journal, you'll find no truth in commercially vetted copy (if you can't be bought and try to Gawker like heroic Hamilton Nolan they will shut you down, again and again and again, and bless the whack-a-moles of insurgency!), on the big screen scripts which were approved by billionaire investors (should you produce a program like Underground they will torpedo your entire network) and passed state and military censors' redacting pens. But from the mouths of plebs, and the pages direct printed via Kindle, a few sparse beacons of hope, sparks of possibility may be discerned.

"There comes a time when silence is not acceptable..." Reutter begins his compact treatise from the premise of. Let us salute him and tip our hats to the brave souls not cowed, subdued or muzzled by increasing pressures to desist and comply. You are the last line of defense against those innumerable wolves ('tricksters' and 'fraudsters' as the author describes them, who are no less prevalently to be found clothed in wool) at our gate, this generation and everyone are indebted to your commitments and sacrifices throughout history into the unfathomable future.

'Restoration will come' g ambitiously projects. Let us hope it does not dally!

Jerome Berglund has published book reviews in Fevers of the Mind, Fireflies Light, Frogpond, Haiku Canada, Setu Bilingual Journal, Valley Voices, also frequently exhibits poetry, short stories, plays, and fine art photography in print magazines, online journals, and anthologies.

A writer of poems and stories and on occasion literary criticism, g emil reutter was born in Bristol, Pa., raised in Levittown, Pa. and has lived most of his life in of Philadelphia, Pa. A highly decorated member of the Railroad Police, he retired from a 26 year career in the patrol, anti-crime and criminal investigation division. Prior he worked as a steelworker, tea blender and a number of other jobs. A graduate of Neshaminy High School, he graduated from the New England Institute of Law Enforcement Management, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. He attended Temple University and Penn State University among others. His poetry and fiction have been widely published in the small and electronic press as well as numerous newspapers and magazines. Twenty-one of his collections have been published. He published The Fox Chase Review (2008 – 2015). He is currently a contributing editor at North of Oxford .

Belinda's Review of Myths, Beasts & the Ways of Water by Clint Frakes

 Clint Frakes’s Myths, Beasts & the Ways of Water is a capacious, humane collection that moves easily between intimate lyric confession, mythic imagination, and wry, often mordant social observation. Organized in five sections—Mystery not Always Unkind; Dancing Among the Makers; Unreal Cities; Love’s Lost Horses; The Ways of Water—the book charts a life of attention: to landscape (desert mesas, Hawaiian shorelines, the Rogue and Colorado rivers), to beloved teachers and peers (Ginsberg, Snyder, Collom), and to the small, stubborn incidents that accrete into moral memory.

Frakes’s voice is muscular and eclectic. He can pare a line to imagistic precision (“The Chinese business lady…holds up her golden retriever’s tail / as it shits straight into a Macy’s bag”) and also luxuriate in long, incantatory sequences—the book’s myth-poems and ritual narratives—which read like sustained meditations on belonging and loss. The “Desire” series and longer elegies (notably “Father Fisheye”) show his gift for mixture: humor and grief, vernacular energy and learned allusion. There is a recurring ethical core—attention to indigenous presence, ecological grief, and the residue of American violences—that prevents the collection from mere aesthetic play.

Formally, Frakes is resourceful. He uses short imagistic lyrics, prose-adjacent narratives, litany, and occasional collage; his diction ranges from colloquial bluntness to mythic lyricism. His influences—Beat candor, eco-poetics, Native and Romantics threads—are audible but never derivative: he retools them into poems that feel lived-in rather than performative. At their best, poems like “Chelonia mydas,” “Rogue River Redemption,” and “What the River Dreams” combine natural history, careful observation, and spiritual longing into lines that linger.

What the River Dreams

We carry a tune & often desert it on high

plains amid fencing light & shadow.

It won’t matter for long what I felt or where—

like how water can only fall into itself

each rain, bluer for the turn.

Maybe you finally had enough—

yet the road to which you’ve sewn yourself

touches what you never could have loved alone.

The breath of our lives persists

beyond all foreseen destinations.

The old ones say the water never began

& cannot end, that it garners the memory

of every thread & station it’s met—

from the bellies of stars to the viscera of willow.

From my chosen hill, it’s hard to imagine

its stiller parts beneath the ripple.

What this river dreams is what I long to say.

Overall, Myths, Beasts & the Ways of Water is a generous, restless book: attentive, politically minded, rooted in place and relationship, and rewarding for readers who value stewardship, elegy, and a poet willing to mix the sacramental with the profane.

Recommended for readers of contemporary American lyric who appreciate ecological awareness, cross-cultural commentary, and a poet comfortable with both tenderness and provocation.

Where Lies the Passage of Light

after Ammons

“The light became her grace and dwelt among

Blind eyes and shadows that are formed as men;

Lo, how the light doth melt us into song…”

—Ezra Pound, “Ballatetta”

I have considered how light spills without intent,

exposing all surface it surveys

& how the mule deer’s dark morning legs

defy nothing as she nibbles bitter shoots.

Undisguised at my backdoor, light asks nothing

& marks the foreheads of the hills

while I slaughter hourly beasts by its rhythm to weave

another day’s geography of purpose.

I watched the cottonwood leaves rot in the blond grass

under fat beads of October dew.

Only weeks ago I bathed in the spinning silver

they gathered from their tree—

drinking the magnetic river that now pulls them low.

A spider darts along the twinkling curtain rod

that staves the rays that bare all shape

& slant eddies of meaning.

Breath deepens toward the need for meat & grain.

I am certain what should be cleaned & what gathered:

children to be taught their great ascent.

Nothing escapes the trail of Earth’s cascade

as I turn toward & away from comforts & pains—

my ears ringing in their own hollows.

Dawn’s horses shake their manes

against the spectrum of wide tomorrows.

The heart is a basket of such flutters,

passed from night to this

& stars will fade into light’s excess.

Clint Frakes is a poet, writer, teacher, editor, ceremonialist and naturalist living in Sedona, AZ since 1992. His poetry, prose and narrative non-fiction has appeared in over 100 journals, magazines and anthologies in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Argentina since 1987.  He was named one of the 50 Best New Poets of 2008 by former American Poet Laureate, Mark Strand, and also received the Josephine Darner Distinguished Poet Prize (2008). Other awards include the James Vaughan Poetry Prize (2006), The Pudding House Chapbook Prize (2008) and the Peggy Ferris Memorial Prize for Poetry (2006). 

He is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of the Naropa Institute (1989), Northern Arizona University creative writing program (1994) and received his Ph.D. with emphasis in creative writing from the University of Hawaii (2006). He is the former Chief Editor of The Hawaii Review and Big Rain. He has taught in Writing and English programs across the country. Clint specializes in nature writing and spiritual memoir.