Expecting Hands
Moonstone Press
$19.99
You can purchase a copy here.
Reviewed by guest blogger, Anthony Palma
When I first picked up John Sozanski’s debut collection Expecting Hands, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Sozanski has had a wide range of experiences: he has traveled; he has been involved in painting and visual art; he is well-read and articulate, and I was excited to see how all of these things came together in a poetry collection. What I found in these pages were carefully crafted poems that tell fascinating tales big and small. They exist in a world where poetry is the language, currency, and creed.
From page one, the thing that stood out to me was the meticulous craft with which these poems were composed. The line breaks are crisp and appropriate, drawing us through the worlds of the poems, holding our hands gently as a guide, not a pedant. A careful editing and revision process has ensured that there is never a word that feels out of place or unnecessary. Poems like “two for one” and “ricochets” perfectly embody the tight free verse that Sozanski employs.
In regards to Sozanski’s background, I was pleasantly pleased to see that a number of the poems in this collection reference his connections to other types of art. “Weeds” is for the author Frank McCourt, and there are references to Rumi, Shakespeare, Jerry Garcia, and more. The part of the book where this is most evident, though, is the section entitled “My Friends” that includes a series of ekphrastic poems dealing with El Greco, Pablo Picasso, and the conceptual work 50 Days at Ilium by Cy Twombly that takes up an entire room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. These are true works of ekphrasis, emphasizing the conversation between author and painter, painting and poem. How are we to respond to art? How does it impact us? John Sozanski might just have that answer.
However, all of this is not, in this reviewer’s opinion, the strongest part of this collection. That distinction goes to the sense of reality in these poems. Through all of the artistic and philosophical musings, not once do these poems come across as pretentious or self-important. Poems like “stille nacht” and “even birthdays” call out the violence and moral cost of hatred, while “the indifferent wave” muses on the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the ignored warning signs of the current conflict. All of this comes together in “on the road to Harlem,” a poem that tells the story of traveling to Harlem for art through a montage of social inequity, conversations, and culture told with a matter-of-fact style that would make Frank O’Hara proud. This poem perfectly captures what seems to be the main project of this collection – elevating the mundane and filing down the extraordinary onto an even plane of insight accessibility, and meaning.
In reading this book, it is clear what John Sozanski loves. After all, this book is a love story. It is written out of love of art, of words, and of expression. It tells a love story about places, faces, and even pets. Most importantly, it is a love letter to humanity, to us, in all of our joy, tragedy, and despair. And just like a love letter it offers us the hope of a better day tomorrow.
Anthony Palma’s work attempts to bridge the gap between poetry and other forms while addressing issues of social justice, identity, and existence. His work has appeared in publications such as Rue Scribe, Oddball Magazine, and the Show Us Your Papers Anthology. His debut collection of poetry, flashes of light from the deep (Parnilis Media), and Horror, a chapbook, are available on Amazon.