Steve Potter reviews Larry Laurence’s Thought Despairiments in Raven Chronicles Press.
“If one were to devise a big feels vs. deep thoughts metric for works of literature, one might be tempted to place Larry Laurence’s collection Thought Despairiments on the deep thoughts end of the spectrum, but it actually straddles the entire range. The third short stanza of “Words, Words, Words¹” reads:
enigmatically
(footnotes²)
The poem’s footnotes are:
1 Some in the poem’s body are sampled from Spring and All, XXII (aka The Red Wheelbarrow), W. C. Williams, and from The Man on the Dump, Wallace Stevens.
2 Footnotes: Risings, fallings. Cognitive yo-yos.
3 Xeroform®: Petrolatum gauze patch constructed of a non-adherent dressing with added medicating components to protect and promote healing.
Yes, on first reading, this book appears to be full of playful, brainy writing with intellectual vibes more so than emotional ones. On further inspection, however, one finds it suffused with emotion surging beneath the surface. That neologism of Laurence’s, despairiments, holds as much heft in the title as thought. The collection does not lack moments of sentiment, lyricism, and beauty.”
