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.

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.

GAS Members Interview Poet and Artist, Belinda Subraman

Recent photo from Beyond Van Goph

 

GAS: What life event drew you into poetry? 

BELINDA: I was dyslexic and had a hard time learning to read. I finally learned to put my finger under the letters and pronounce each one. Even today I hear myself read each word inside my head. It was in the 6th grade that I became excited by poetry. I don’t remember what prompted me to read books of poetry.  Maybe it was my teacher, Mrs. Woodruff.  I remember writing poems in the 7th grade.  They were often humorous and classmates enjoyed them and passed them around. I can say poetry has been an important part of my life since around eleven years old.

GAS: Are you a musician? 

BELINDA: I don’t think so but I can make some cool sounds on steel tongue drums and I took African drumming lessens for years. Sample:

GAS:  Regarding the visual arts, are you taught or self taught? 

BELINDA: Self taught, but I read books, see videos, go to museums, etc. All those things tigger excitement to try new things. Only recently do I feel like I’m finding my own voice.

Inside a Combination Lock.  Mixed Media.

GAS: How is the place you live reflected in your creative work?  

BELINDA: I live in the desert. Cacti seems to pop up in a lot of my paintings and I grew up playing in a forest so trees often appear.  However, mostly I paint abstracts. As for poetry (and art), everything thing I’ve experienced plays into it as well as the places I’ve lived. One time I wrote down all the places I’ve lived and it came to about 25. I’ve lived in a lot of states, lived in Germany for six years and traveled to many countries.

My Desert. Mixed media.

GAS: How did GAS: Poetry Art and Music come about?

BELINDA: I’ll try to make a long story short. I started appearing in small magazines under different names in the 70s (Belinda Bumgarner, Mary Eldreth, Belinda Subramanian).

Some of my chapbooks from last century, before Print On Demand.

I started a magazine in 1984 called Gypsy, mostly because we were moving every couple of years or so. 1994 was the last regular publication of Gypsy and Vergin' Press for a long while.  In the early 2000s I did one more print issue called Loose Leaf Gypsy. It had hand-colored drawings, poems and photos on 100 lb. paper.  The poetry was bound in the middle of a folder and the side pockets held art that you could frame. That was way too expensive so the next Gypsy was online.  I did three issues online back when personal computers were still fairly new.  I didn’t know how to code and used a Flash program that not everyone could see. Somewhere in all this time I went through a divorce, went to nursing school and became a hospice nurse (as well as producing a weekly interview show and being politically active). Around 2007 I did a blog called Gypsy Art Show and did articles about poetry, art and music. A couple of people contributed reviews and essays from time to time.  After a few years I bought the domain name but when it came time to renew the name I could never do it. There was no way.  I kept going in circles.  I lost the blog and “they” tried to sell my name back to me for $5,000.  Heck with that.  In 2020 I started GAS: Poetry, Art and Music which you are reading right now.   I also started a video component to GAS which you can click on from this site. Example:

 Cover art by Jocelyne Desforges. 

Poetry, art and music by to Andy Clausen, Doug Adamz, Dan Nielsen, Jack Albert, Tony Hansen, Karla Van Vliet, Joshua Michael Stewart, Christopher Ethan Burton, Beat Poet Society (Bengt O Björklund, Anna-Bella Munter) Mark Saba, Amy Randolph, Nathan D. Horowitz, Jose Varela, Emocat (Heidi R Blakeslee), Henry Stanton and Ken Clinger.

GAS:  Are you able to discuss the concept of ”success” in the arts?

BELINDA: That would be different for each artist.  I have created things all my life but only recently was able to call myself an artist. I only started showing my paintings on the internet about 4 years ago.  The first one I showed several people asked if it was for sale. I was amazed and stunned and just said I’d never thought about it. But I gave a price and someone came to pick it up. I continued to post new paintings and requests to buy came in nearly every time. It took awhile to part with more paintings and to figure out what they were worth, or rather what price it would take for me to part with them.  Somewhere around this time I started considering myself an artist. I always thought of an artist as a sort of magician and finally decided I was making magic too.

Brambles. Mixed Media. Lucky Trifecta:  Cover art of EPOCH  (Scotland) and Chrysalis (El Paso) and 2nd place winner in the Sun Bowl Exhibit 2022, longest running art show in the Southwest.

GAS: Do you find more inspiration, re:subject matter, from outside or inside yourself?

I don’t think I can make a distinction like that because everything we witness goes through our own filters and forms our unique interpretations based on our knowledge and experience or lack of them.  I guess the answer is both.  I do tend to be more philosophical now so sometimes my writing is more about ideas but that came from a lifetime of synthesizing experiences.

My Amazon Author page

Never Too Many Sunsets: Three Generations, Whitehead, Amram and Messina, reviewed by Belinda Subraman

Whitehead, Amram and Messina

Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate, Frank Messina and David Amram, Music Artist and Beat (2020-Lifetime) Award from the National Beat Poetry Foundation, have come together to share their talent and souls with us. They recite story poems with the accomplished musical backing by David Amram. Every track is moving and beautiful in its own way but I'll just mention some of them in hopes you'll listen to them yourselves.

Amram starts the album with deep reflection in Old Man in the Mirror.  In Track 3, Whitehead tells of his deep love for his roots in Kentucky Bound. Then, in The Bottoms, he tells about working hard, farming in his homeland. You can hear his pride and excitement in helping his father tame the land. In Track 6, Mrs. Brickman, Messina reminds us that everything we do leaves a lasting impression.  On Track 9, Playing for the Mets, Messina relays an exciting story of playing baseball with his friends, age 10, with a couple of real NY Mets players watching and encouraging them. Track 10, Mama, is one of the most moving pieces, taking us back to Ron's childhood watching his mom kill chickens by popping their heads off or shooting a chicken off a high roost, also shooting a tree down for Christmas! On Track 12, Daddy Screamed in the Night, Whitehead tells of his father's nightmares after a long day's work and how he would sometimes yell out his name and made him realize his Dad really loved him. Track 14, Emotional Frostbite, Messina tells of a long period of depression but how he recovered through the love of his son. On Track 14, My Heart Swells for You, Messina tells the story of a deep love for a woman, a child they had together and the tragedy of her death/departure.

This album also features the excellent music of Owen Reynolds on on bass and Teddy Owens (Director/Conductor of The Louisville Symphony Orchestra). on clarinet and beautiful, moving vocals of Robin Whitehead Tichenor. David Amaram plays piano, French horn, flute(s), & percussion. He plays at least one instrument, and often more, on every track.

 Mama Gave Me the World by Ron Whitehead from Never Too Many Sunsets: Three Generations, Whitehead, Amram and Messina.

Available on Amazon, Apple music  

 

Listen FREE on Spotify!  

NEVER TOO MANY SUNSETS CD and many other titles by Ron Whitehead & Jinn Bug are available from Trancemission Press 

You can also find this album on Pandora and other online venues.