ANYONE FOR LOVE? - Paperback (Mar. 14, 2005) by John Howard Reid
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Anyone for love and other Verses was published in 2005. The first line of the title poem Anyone for Love? reads: “Whatever happened to romance? You remember Romance—Romance with the Romanesque glance…that hungry thirst for tulip-tossed words in time and season, those whispered endearments in boundless variations of radiance, rhyme, rhythm and reason.” Perhaps, we have to store up the romance of all our experiences, let them lie around our thoughts, becoming a life time loving estate for our hearts as we age. There are 100 poems in search of readers in this 155-page work of picture poetry, a feast for the eyes as much as a party for the imagination. His lines of words were meticulously drawn becoming pictures of pine trees, architecture or ocean waves.
Reid told me he always loved step poems and picture poems and created them in his mind by simply measuring mentally the space he wanted to fill and then select words of appropriate length that conveyed what he actually wanted to say! He feels with the popularity of pdf’s and computers, manual artistry like his would be way too expensive to recreate in this day and time. His picture poetry is a delectable food for the mind, soul and spirit as well as the eyes. Perhaps, the highest accomplishment of human consciousness is the ability to turn our poetry into visual imaging. Before poets can do this they must first question all things much like the philosopher below,
In the poem, A Proverbial Philosopher, my favorites lines are, “Raised—as robotic readers fight your mazes, Scaling heights of bliss, With glee, their favorite choices…He’s a triumph of Victorian intellect, philosophy over brawn…a genius of the quill, jealous harbinger of our new dawn…”
In his poem, The Trouble with Sex, Reid writes, “The trouble with sex and the senses is a folly of life’s ambience and defenses, we find ourselves skirting an obstacle course—Impelled by this outmoded yet overwhelming force” This poem inspired me to write an article myself on the Trouble with Sex featuring reasons why our bodies won’t do what your minds wants as we age. This is the definition of good poetry when it opens up the readers’ minds like umbrellas.
There is a three-page rant by this Bible scholar in, I, Judas, who in conversation with a holy man, Judas says he would like to go back in time…go back to his childhood, back to that day when first he realized who he was, where he was, and just what he was destined for…” Sadly lacking Judas had decided much too soon in his life he wanted to be a man whose counsel and advice hushed any assembly…he wanted to be thought of as Lord before the Lord paid homage to him!” Perhaps Judas knew all along he was to be a fool.
As I am a book-worm myself, so I enjoyed his poem, Books. “All were grandma’s enemies…he muses. “Try as might, they never looked neat…Resisted attempts to stand them up straight because spines were too flimsy or pages overweight, cover colours mismatched, their heights implacably awry; and even their breadths delighted in non-uniformity…Books magnetized dust…wore skirts and plaid topcoats…still sought shelter and sanctuary, yet mocked holy orders…who sought uniformity, etiquette, solace…dazzling germ-and-friendliness-free purity.”
These poems were wonderfully received by all my senses especially Books, which reminded me of my own mom now deceased many years. She was always reading romance magazines and then trying to pile them in respectable and pleasing piles close by her. I hated the combined smells of her cigarettes and magazines when I was a child. I felt ignored and neglected. Now, I purposely go to book stores and hang out around the magazine racks. There are too many perfumes emanating from the tidy assembly for me to get a throwback whiff to my past, but I feel like mom is happy I am now writing myself.
I recognize so many of our kids in Reid’s poem, Lost Youth… the parents “breeding in them irreconcilable urges for self-indulgence and then wondering why they turn out as surly, lazy, vampiric no-hopers who prey upon themselves with no love in their gormless hearts?” This is a little negative for there are so many more kids coming up behind the losers trying to do something positive.
There is even an Internet Dating Song (Tenor) and response Internet Dating Song (Soprano) There is a poem about Confidence, Gone Fishing, A tide of Roses, one of my favorites Bus Stop and many poems of past movie stars like Alone in the Dark with Alice Faye and Betty Grable…a Technicolored wonderment of Hollywood allure…the very essence of manufactured incandescense…” There is also a poem called Cinema Sixties… “a sanctuary for cowards and fools.” For those of you star-struck, be sure and check out Reid’s Hollywood Classics at Amazon and his website.
FIVE STARS from Joyce White
Sculpting the Heart Book Reviews
