D R James

If God Were Gentle D R James

Poetry. Where were these poems when I was growing up and being filled with enough fear to have us in hell at recess while believing every platitude about God's good will? In language as bracing as an astringent--'as [the sun] dripped from its last slip of cloud/like a tear from a bloody lid'--D. R. James has created a collection in which he sucks it up and walks unarmed into his past, knowing when he does it becomes 'now, ' relentlessly battering him. Never considering turning away, or back, James' narrator trudges through one circle of [one] soul-destructive experience after another. If you want your poems to save you, that ain't gonna happen here. If you want lemonade out of lemons, you'll end up with the bitterest of bitters. If you want 'It was worth it in the end' you'll be left with a question. What you will discover here, however, is a strangely comforting form of optimism, assuring that you really can just keep going on.--Jack Rid