Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

226 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Book Reviews
cities upon cities of tents to keep the rain out
for all our refugees...
Hasan transforms this past symbol of peace and hope into a grim
reminder of the reality those living in the present continue to face.
At a time when there are often complaints that poetry is
obscure, difficult, and self-indulgent, Hasan’s work is urgent and
straightforward. Though often bleak, Grieving Shias is a reminder of
the need to speak out loudly against the din and unrelenting forces of
the past, present, and future, shaping the lives and lands of the world
we live in.
—Reviewed by Jon Tribble
Light, Kate. Gravity’s Dream: New Poems and Sonnets. West Chester,
PA: West Chester University Poetry Center, 2006. 79 pages. $14.95.
Kate Light’s poems in her third collection, Gravity’s Dream, the winner
of the 2006 Donald Justice Award, are at times intensely personal,
recalling Emily Dickinson’s playful scrutiny and intelligence. But unlike
Dickinson’s poems, which some readers find cryptic, Light’s poems
are at once concentrated and accessible, and invite communication.
While Light writes a specific lyric of the self, to read her work is often
to feel a pleasure of finding one’s own experience—of love, confusion,
discovery—named.
The poems suggest that naming and puzzling over the naming of
one’s world are lifelong tasks that began early. “Skipping” describes a
grade-school promotion that results in a crestfallen introduction to a
reductive world:
What is a Yes / No test? What is Greater Than / Less Than?
I used my thumb and first finger to measure each number
over and over. Weren’t they all the same size? Yes. No.
There hadn’t been desks, just tables in a square,
and a teacher saying: This is the letter A
while my heart sank.
New readers, as well as with those familiar with Light’s use of the
narrative sonnet sequence in her previous books, The Law of Falling