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is not a real street corner
unless it has a stray dog
pissing on a fire hydrant"
In a wide-ranging collection of thirty-one poems, all composed in free verse, Pavlakis offers the reader a smorgasbord of literary delight and thoughtful pieces that pack quite a punch. The subjects range from ecological poems celebrating nature’s majesty to philosophical contemplations of time and space to character-driven narrative vignettes revealing both human drive and heartache. A genuine, often humorous poetic declaration runs through many of these pieces, proclaiming, as the writer states, that “small things make good poems.” The poet further offers deeper, somewhat darker, subjects, including poems on death and endings, societal violence, the future unknowns of artificial intelligence, and issues of power and class. Still others explore the nature of words themselves, potent personal memories, and lamentations of our current society as a “cell phone nation.”
Many of the author’s poems effectively expresses—in a rather dry, matter-of-fact manner—the notion that our daily human bickering over minute matters pales in significance to the larger, ultimate reality: the universe was here long before us, will continue long after we’re gone, and Mother Nature continues onward, as sure as night follows day and the arrival of spring after winter. Pavlakis has an accomplished knack for taking a relatively banal aspect of human life and, with creative wordplay and poetic craft, repositioning said subject in a manner that reveals humanity’s folly. The poet is ultimately unafraid to admit collective ignorance. This approach is quite refreshing, and the poet’s humble, open, observational approach provides these poems with an additional layer of delightful, honest insight.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review