An Occasional Damage of Roses | Reviewed by Kent Lane for IndieReader

In his introduction to this collection of poems, James Victor Anderson writes; “The one who dwells in the Self is real, and the one who dwells in the paradigm of the world is false. The one who is real needs no ego, but the one who is false must build and defend an ego.” In his work Anderson seeks to spotlight those illuminative moments when spiritual consciousness pierces a controlled and constructed view of the world and truth and revelation beckon. Freed from the shackles of other’s perceptions an enlightened individual can finally become true to the self. A prisoner can find a means of escape. Many of the poems contained within AN OCCASIONAL DAMAGE OF ROSES are focused on these moments of realization, though more often than not the spark is not the gift of discovering new wisdom more the flash of re-acquaintance with forgotten knowledge.

In the poem “Manchild” the narrator wonders where the effervescent, inquisitive child goes as we grow old. “Do they fall asleep in places we have left behind”, he asks, “or fade away like colors left on windowsills?” This idea of the lost wisdom and wonder of distant youth recurs in numerous other poems most notably in the spiky, angular “Bad Boy” and the maudlin “Old Man Lost Young”. In “Lunch With Joe” there appears a harsher recollection of childhood as two people discuss their fathers with no great fondness, “We ate like devils thrusting pitchforks/ turning father on the grill like sausage”. There is melancholic nostalgia in many of the best poems in the collection as Anderson unpacks his memories. He finds clarity in retrospection along the vivid, verdant “Forest Path” or in “Simpson Park” where “giants of a whispering wind/ groaned beneath their roughened bark.”

In contrast to the somewhat verbose introduction, the majority of the poems are composed of clear, concise lines. A simple syntax that makes the work easily accessible. Occasionally Anderson delights in clever internal rhymes and with assonance and alliteration as in this wonderful stanza from the poem “Bamboo”: “and archers bending/ bowstrings/ to a distant morning/ whistling hollow shafts/ to birds unhindered”. A couple of the poems seem out of place. “To A Fat Ugly Girl In A Purple Tee” forgoes the author’s considered introspection and reads as unnecessary cruelty and “Eulogy”, the story of the funeral of a “strange old coot”, though in itself a fine poem with an excellent closing line, seems strangely jarring in its change of tempo and temperament to the poems that surround it. Though Anderson aims to highlight “the emergence of a spiritual consciousness” in the face of the falseness of a harsh world, his clearest insights arrive from reinvestigating the past rather than contemplating the present.

James Victor Anderson’s AN OCCASIONAL DAMAGE OF ROSES is an accessible collection of poems written in clear, concise lines that revel in reconnecting with the inherent wisdom of innocent youth.