TITLE INFORMATION
THERE'S A PERSON IN HERE
A Collection of Short Stories and Poems About Holding On, Letting Go, and the Space In-Between
James Patrick
Archway Publishing (178 pp.)
$19.67 paperback, $4.99 e-book
ISBN: 978-1-4808-0737-2; January 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A debut collection offers a poetic retrospective that spans a lifetime.
This volume from 67-year-old Patrick touches on themes of mortality, loss, regret, and health struggles. Through first- and third-person points of view, free verse, and prose poems, the author revisits the memorable moments of his life and invites the reader to experience aging through his eyes. Midway through the book, he switches styles in a section called “Openings,” featuring 47 first sentences of short stories “not yet written”; most deal with accidents, death, and oddball characters. The collection concludes with the titular poem, an extended stream-of-consciousness narrative. Patrick’s vivid details make mom-and-pop store Sam’s come alive: “Brown hamburgers, bacon and eggs all day, sandwiches if you liked rye, and ice-cold milkshakes that always had a dividend left in the silver mixer that didn’t quite fit into your tall glass on the first pour.” He uses quotidian scenes as metaphors for the passage of time, as when he recalls boiling binkies as a father, then a grandfather, or focuses on a woman picking berries: “Her days flew by / In bushels / Her children too / While she picked / They grew.” Thankfully, the nostalgia isn’t all sentimental. In “Eulogy,” the narrator remembers his father as “a hero and an enemy. A nightmare in a suit.” From his boyhood to his senior years, storylines cycle back, such as one about a man whose wife ran off with their children’s tennis instructor. Patrick is painfully honest as he mourns everything from lost keys to wasted time. “This hand is weaker now / These eyes see less / This voice is softer / Than before,” he writes in “A Clue?” The rare love poems shimmer with joy, like “Pretend,” in which the narrator reimagines himself in pine form: “Remember / And enjoy my being / Available to you any day, / Any time / You need a Christmas.” While some of the descriptions lack juice (“It is very cold. / Wind blows against him”), these poems gently tug at the heartstrings.
A moving account of the profound moments in one man’s life.
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