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Midnight Embers: A Book of Sonnets

by Candice James

Candice James’s first book of poetry, 1979’s A Split in the Water, illustrated her deep soul and ripe intellect. Instead of pursuing poetry, however, she spent 30 years working as a singer-songwriter and bass player. In 2010, she returned to writing poetry, and is now poet laureate of the city of New Westminster, B.C. Appropriately for a musician, her latest book is a collection of sonnets, a poetic form that resembles little songs.

Midnight Embers explores themes of mistrust, and employs a narrative voice clouded in suspicion and distress. “I knew right from the start I’d lose it all,” James writes, “But I still played the game and took the fall.” In “Great Sorrow,” the narrator admits to approaching life “with symbolism, much to my dismay, / And I’m unable to escape this state.” The poem’s narrator has lost the ability to hear her inner voice; her ears are dull to the sound of truth, purpose, and compassion. James continues, “The world’s askew and life has turned askance, / It spirals inward to my heart’s demise.” The best poem in the collection, “Vancouver,” captures the “svelte condos, mountains, surf and turf and bars” and “horns and tinkling bells” that typify the city of glass.

The poems in Midnight Embers span seasons, jazz music, and loss. Given that James has limited her formal palette to sonnets, the book does have a certain predictability to it. An entire collection of sonnets isn’t really conducive to reading cover to cover. These poems work best taken one or two at a time.

 

Reviewer: Shannon Webb-Campbell

Publisher: Libros Libertad

DETAILS

Price: $18

Page Count: 116 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-92676-322-4

Released: March

Issue Date: 2012-6

Categories: Poetry