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Place Where Light Is (poems), 2003Review of Place Where Light Is by Laurel Johnson of Midwest Book Review Place Where Light Is Alexander Shaumyan ashaumyan@hotmail.com for orders ISBN 1591962966 $10.00 paperback In these cold rainy nights, In these streets, in these dreams I'll walk in my solitude To a place where light is. Place Where Light Is has been aptly named. Mr. Shaumyan zeroes in on contemporary topics -- war, oil, greed, political chicanery, the shock of 9/11 -- and shines his unblinking light for us to see beneath the surface. He sets the tone early on with "Hope Is": Hope is a song that lifts A man beyond his time, It feeds the hungry with its gifts, Yet never spends a dime. In "A Toast to the World", he skewers just about everything modern man holds dear, and rightly so: Let us make this world safe for bureaucracy And let's embrace patriotic pomposity and intellectual precocity and Nicaraguan atrocity Love in all its many forms is well represented, as always, in this poet's work. I particularly liked this excerpt from "Razor-Sharp Love": a fleeting memory of your caressing tongue on my chest that's what you are a black veil of loneliness. He cries out for human rights and speaks for the unheard masses. "The New World Manifesto" was brilliant. I excerpt here a small portion of his long poem: We the people are living breathing human beings and not mere machines manipulated by the media And finally, he hits the nail on the head in "Politics Sucks!": There is a deep freeze over Washington that numbs the hearts of politicians and makes them deaf and blind to the real needs of the people... Alexander Shaumyan is a new voice crying in the wilderness. Sometimes humble, often profane and touched with sorrow, his poetry speaks truth. Laurel Johnson Midwest Book Review |
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