Though he tries to wrap up his falling apart in beautiful metaphors, if we look closely enough underneath the rubble, we can see a man intent in convincing us (and perhaps himself) that he is doing really well, that he can just “get up shake the dust, and keep going.” His greatest ambition? It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think the collection, especially the 30 for 30 portions, resulted from a recent break up – especially considering the considerable references to staying and leaving. Reading through the collection, we get a sense of how accurate this is. In most of the cases where a you is introduced, it is a lover. Most times, it is the writer addressing himself though the reader feels addressed as well. Also, there is no short of “You”s in the collection. There is the writer and his father challenging “Alzheimer’s to a fist fight…” There is loneliness, which “has always been good at making into debris…” There is the future, “a blurry photograph taken with an awful camera.” There is much about loss and regret and forgiveness and self-reflection. Nonetheless, there’s a lot that is named. This is important because these, apart from Bob Marley & Prince, will be the only proper names we see throughout. To start the collection, we’re introduced to Simeona & Sam – the author’s parents. Clearly, this wasn’t the case with Francisco. 30 of the poems – aptly indicated by the 1/30 through 30/30 that is part of each title – are from 2016’s “30 for 30” – a challenge in April of each year (during National Poetry Writing Month) where a poet is supposed to write a poem each day in the month. It is important to know that in this collection that is 52 pages of poems, each poem takes up just a page sometimes, only a corner of the page. This creates familiarity, so much so that in certain moments, the reader feels the need to tell him that he can trust us with a little more. Still, the reader gets a sense that he must understand what they might be going through. Though personal, as he speaks about his own experiences, he scarcely goes into details. I don’t know if I should say “in spite of” or “because of” this, but either way, Francisco is skilled at speaking to our universal desires and anxieties. To be sure, not many people have the patience for that. If close attention is paid though, there’s a lot that’s been said, though they have to be extracted. It’s greed on my part, I must say, because I wanted less abstraction and more of what I called reality. Quite frankly, this has also been what’s sometimes frustrated me in the past with his poems. I don’t quite know who else is as adept as he is with handling metaphors – extended or not – even in a poem as short as a few lines. Without a doubt, what I always come back to Francisco’s poems for is his metaphors. Certainly, it is no easy task to talk, without any bias, about the work of someone who was one of my earliest introductions to spoken word poetry. Most definitely, he’s inching towards becoming a household name. I want to admit that whatever I might say about this writer will most likely be underwhelming.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |