Book Review: Cry Through The Pen
Cry Through The Pen, by Fidel M. Love. Published by Fidel M. Love, United States of America, May 24, 2012, Trade Paperback and e-book, 222 pages.
Reviewed by Cronin Detzz.
Fidel M. Love’s Cry Through The Pen is a gritty, poignant collection of realism prose where “Despite these fears / I cry ink / And write with tears.” The first poem, “Little Black Boy Blues,” sets the tone as Love describes a youth struggling through other peoples’ judgments while his girlfriend is newly pregnant. He is afraid to be alone, and the whole world is expecting him to fail. Love switches places in “Mother 2 Be,” where he writes of a newly-pregnant teenager who yearns to be a good mother, despite the terrible parents she had herself. He writes from the female perspective again in “One Woman to Raise a Family.”
Love’s author profile states that he is from the south side of Chicago, as am I, so I find it easy to relate to him. Some people are born into privileged families, while others – as many from the south side – don’t have similar opportunities; life dares them to face tough issues.
In “A Believer’s Dream,” he writes: “I wanted the life of fame and wealth / Though coming from a life of poverty myself / I dreamed a dream / It was all I could do.” It is by living and enduring through issues like poverty, teen pregnancies, drugs, and violence that some poets find their voice. I do not know if Love had to endure these types of battles himself, but he at least surely knew fellow warriors that had to fight through life’s battlefield. One of the chapters is entitled “War,” and he writes that “we [are] soldiers living in a time where our minds are caged.”
It takes a special kind of strength and a willingness to be vulnerable and let it all out for everyone to see, a quality that makes Love’s poetry brave. A common theme in his writing is that he must be strong and cannot let his tears show. There is a chapter aptly named “Cry.”
Cry Through The Pen is not solely angst-ridden street poetry, however. Love writes of visiting a senile grandmother who is now a shell of herself. Once again, I easily relate; my own grandmother is still alive, but she cannot even recognize herself in a photo. Some of his poems are prayers and end with an “Amen.” In the chapter entitled “She’s Heaven’s One Lost Angel,” Love includes many poems about love (naturally!). Sometimes he writes of beautiful women whom he’d like to love, sometimes he writes of love lost, and other times he writes about the depth of his love.
The only suggestion I have for the author is that for his next book, he should use some beta readers or take the extra time needed to fix small grammar and punctuation issues. This is always the risk we take when we self-publish. I saw a period out of place in one of my books and I let it haunt me – what can we say, we pour out our souls into our books and we do our best to make them perfect.
I hope that Love keeps writing and keeps sharing. One of my favorite lines was: “Give me dreams – in these dreams it’s my turn to try / Give me ink, give me wings – I will learn to fly.”