“Can You Catch My Flow?”
Lidy Wilks, author of “Can You Catch My Flow?” is celebrating National Poetry Month with a blog tour. For this stop on the tour, I’ll be reviewing her chapbook, and I’d like to thank her for the free PDF copy so I could do this review. I also want to mention her Rafflecopter raffle — see the link at the bottom of this post.
I would say the theme of this chapbook is being a wife and mother and how the roles that are expected of us as adults can be restrictive. I would like to focus on some highlights.
In “Sleepless Nights” there is some wonderful specificity describing the feeling of missing someone:
just to hear your low,
lulling voice 202.41 miles away.
Now 9 months, 10 days, 2 weeks,
3 hours and 45 minutes has gone by
and I still don’t want to say goodnight
because I want to say good morning.
In “An Aging Love,” Lidy describes a couple’s life together in a series of quick snapshots: meeting, marriage, and children, and the future. This excerpt shows both joys and difficulties:
Melded for eight years, we grated and soothed each other
as you instilled in our sons the definition of a man while I enjoyed
my reverse harem of hugs, kisses and your reprimands.
While “An Aging Love” hints at the narrator’s world being less than perfect, rebellion against conformity is the theme of “Follow the Leader.” Here is an excerpt from the middle:
The adults are Einstein,
Cassandra and the Dali Lama,
all rolled up into one.
And us young’uns best
strive to be
just like them.
In some ways, I think the poem “The Identity of Edvard Munch” is a linchpin for the book. This poem’s tone is rather different from the rest of the chapbook. Its lines are short and the persona that speaks is intended as a 19th-century painter rather than a 21st-century wife and mother, and yet there is a similar complaint about “living in a/stale, conformed world.” This is a complaint that can be understood both by viewers of Munch’s paintings as well as readers of contemporary poetry, so this poem has the effect of taking us out of our modern cookie-cutter lives and connecting us with a larger view.
“Can You Catch My Flow?” is available through the following links:
Amazon
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
eCreate Store
About the Author:
Ever since she was young, Lidy Wilks was often found completely submerged in the worlds of Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Sweet Valley High, and Nancy Drew. She later went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing, from Franklin Pierce University. Where she spent the next four years knee-deep in fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction workshops.
Lidy is the author of Can You Catch My Flow? a poetry chapbook and is a member of Write by the Rails. She currently resides in Virginia with her husband and two children. And an anime, book and manga library, she’s looking to expand, one day adding an Asian drama DVD collection. Lidy continues her pursuit of writing more poetry collections and fantasy novels. All the while eating milk chocolate and sipping a glass of Cabernet. Or Riesling wine.
