Forgive My Trespassing: 01/08/09

I want to read more books outside my comfort zone, including more poetry. When I was asked to review a collection of poetry by Cynthia Blomquist Gustavson, I jumped a the chance.

The collection is called Forgive My Trespassing but it doesn't appear to be in print beyond the promotional copies sent out for review. I don't know if there are plans to start selling this collection of poems but I hope there are.

Forgive My Trespassing is really more memoir than poetry collection. The poems cover points in Gustavon's life, the good and the bad, rendered with emotional clarity through her careful selection of words.

The poems don't seek to shock like so many of the collections I recently read do. They do ask the reader to think and to feel but it's a quiet meditation, not a violent cry for attention.

Near the end of the collection there's a poem that really sums up the entire book. It's called "Please Use These Words for Children" and it focuses on the poet's marriage to a pediatrician and the ways they used to protest the Vietnam war by writing a note on their tax return: "Please use this for children / not for war and guns." At the end of the poem she changes her request asking the reader: "Please use these words for children / and never again for war and games ."

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