When I asked Daniel Sumrall if I should write a review for his chapbook Well Enough at goodreads, he told me not to bother because people were either indifferent or hostile to his work. This naturally made me more curious .
Although I had a million and one things to do, I decided to read his poetry. Sumrall’s style is approachable and easy to understand. I’m not struggling to understand his meaning and can enjoy his intent, at least with the first poem.
His beginning poem begs the question of privacy in an open space on telephone. In the public domain is about listening in to someone’s personal conversation and then seeing that the other person has caught you doing this and they know you have heard and understood their conversation. He compares this to “a knife’s intense precision when hands lack curative intent.”
Ah, guess I spoke too soon about easy to understand. “If landscape rolls out like a body” refuses to feed me the same way as the poem above now “I must penetrate the city’s architecture towers from erections and penetrations upon the earth…no more natural or necessary as the sea ripped with waves in a chiseled man’s abdomen.” gives me more food for thought and I can flow with sensuousness of the prose. I’m not at expert in poetry or about writing metaphor or similes, alliteration or any of these things, and I don’t claim to be. I feel words that make me move inside. I write what I feel and this is what Mr. Sumrall does too. Now I know why people are either indifferent or hostile to his poetry.
I am adding more links for people who would like to read more free chapbooks.
scantilycladpress
goldwakepress
