Plagiarist Pamela L. Laskin

 

Plagiarist

Pamela L. Laskin

Dos Madres Press

ISBN 978-1-933675-73-2

2012  $15.00

“...big, bold words

that I would love to borrow,

if only for a moment,

so I could feel the mountains move...”

The poems in this book, bounce or bob, like words float onto the ocean shore, the tide in and out, the shells picked and saved. The reader finds moist writing on the muscles' dark shell, done by a poet who enjoys the find and places each verse in a writing:

“Bring back the girl

who lifts her dress

like it's an ocean,

while the water whirls

her into rapids

of enthusiasm...”

Laskin uses nature to surround the poems she borrows, the mountains or the ocean or “crying out for rain,” all the poems reflect what is there even if there are parts taken from a previous notation. The poems float into individual forms:

“I borrowed your words

when mine were wet and wild;

shivering, you lent me a shawl

to wrap around bones

that rattled restlessly...”

Plagiarist, is divided into two sections, 1. borrowed, 2. returned. As most poets, Laskin relies on the experience words bring and the phrases offered. She listens. She takes her time carefully. She lends to what has been before. She allows herself to be influenced. She mixes the borrowed, lucky rocks people collect like ocean mixes with sand and there is the pearl encased in her verse:

“Leaving

your luggage packed

with language

not borrowed

from Widener library

or the ivy-trellised buildings,

not the texts of Virgil, Homer, Shakespeare,

or the Celtic crosses

encrypted in vaults adorned with dust.

You have traveled as far as Odysseus,

though you never left

Adams House;

now you're packing

years of papers

diction

to dress, undress, redress

journey far away

from where the Bard rages.

Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor: Wilderness House Literary Review

Reviewer: Ibbetson Street Press

Reviewer: Cervena Barva Press