Black Rose, Dying, is an eloquent, four-seasonspanning,
tour-de-force collection of poems, by young Edward
Val (E’Val) who joins the honored ranks of war-haunted poets who
include Britain’s Sir Walter Raleigh, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried
Sassoon, and America’s Stephen Crane and James
Dickey. E’Val comes by his warrior status authentically and
gravely: Born in Camden, N.J., in early 1983, E’Val has completed three Army deployments in Iraq; wounded in combat,
he’s received a Purple Heart and lost many friends to battles’
ravages. As a wordsmith, he’s published a previous poetry
collection, Enlightened Heart/Darkened Soul; at this moment
he’s working on a third book of poems and a novel to be titled
Of Tooth and Nail. Personally, E’Val is a husband, father and a
man of art and passion who wishes to create in all facets of his
life and effect change in his world by his words – which he
wields in startling variety. E’Val’s poetry in Black Rose, Dying ranges widely in forms and themes, from free to rhyming and off-rhyming
verse to Haiku to several brief prose poems, rendered with
terse wit, irony and probing clarity. “Truth” is suffused with a
wry brevity that indeed reminds one of Stephen Crane.
“Haiku 2” distills Dickey’s observation (in his “Firebombing”)
that death can spread in bleak beauty. “A Soldier’s
Tears” shares the poet’s wrenching regret for the unavoidable
yet tragic “collateral damage” a soldier deals in the “line of
duty.” “Me and You” reflects the ambiguity of pain in parting
from a loved one to go and make war. “Rant” assails a love-betrayer in stark imagery. “True Love” – does this poem deconstruct
a myth… or depict a reality one irresistibly pursues,
though finding it impossible to reach? “Metamorphosis” relates
how love melts a bitterness of soul; “Fall of an Age”
cries the protest of a “pawn” in the deadly game played by
“masters of war”; “Complexity” shares the poet’s conflicted
relationship with God in the face of war and other of the
world’s evils; “Children’s Nightmare Rhyme” and “Today”
are ironic portraits of evil that will chill adults’ blood; E’Val’s
“Concrete Rose” encourages by showing the tough yearnings
of gentle yet indomitable love. Matters neither little nor great escape the intense yet fervent eye Edward Val casts, with strong tenderness, on our times and the human condition. Prepare as you read to hurt, to
weep, to laugh, and superseding all emotion, to think, of the
forever in now, with this young man of ancient heart.