Messing Around with Words
A Book of Poetry
by
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Poetry is a funny thing. Sometimes it soars. Sometimes it drops a few lines at your feet and moves on, leaving you to wonder what just happened. The below poem may provide the reader with what Messing Around With Words contains: Tanks I stand on an open plain With sleet angling into my mouth. The fur of my parka is no match for it. It is morning. Gray. It is cold, deeply chilled. I have a warm knot in my stomach from two shots of vodka. My hosts tell me millions died here— We call it World War Two but that is a luxury of nomenclature, viewed from a distance. Here it is alive, seventy years young, the Great Patriotic War. On this plain hundreds of tanks rolled and roiled. On this plain, men ran behind tanks, among the exploding shells. On this plain, men got frostbite inside bunkers where there was no tea. On this plain, airplanes and bayonets killed all the soldiers once they had killed all the farmers and their children. On this plain was fought the Battle of Kursk that lasted nine months. Ask the children in Kiev, and in Berlin, who never knew their fathers. I stomp the ground. I feel my feet, from a distance. How can you understand Russia unless you stand here, Listening to the nothingness? My son is ten years old. He is climbing over the burned shell of a tank. After seven decades they still are here, rusting witnesses to uncomprehending history. The bodies long ago have rotted into the ground, their grave markers are metal turrets, seeming toys. What do my hosts think of us, standing here speechless, warmed strongly by ice cold vodka, while my child climbs the jungle gyms of death? Numbers of people have no meaning in Russia. History is a thousand years long gone And a thousand years yet to come. This plain has eaten them, chewed them, digested them, deposited them like dung on top of the frozen earth. What is left is tanks. And sleet and wind. Here, have another drink.
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About the Book
Whether inspired by contempt or by love, whether depressed by lack of clarity or being startled by what was clear, whether looking at the poverty in Africa or at rusting shells of burned-out tanks, whether puzzled by or angry at life, or both – Steve Honig’s poetry captures emotional power through a lens of sardonic detail. It is not easy to describe a book of poetry with no theme. It is, at core, focused perceptions triggered by images, events and frustrations. Poems range from sexuality and self-doubt to rage at homo sapiens generally. A conversation with Frank Sinatra segues into a walk in a hillside cemetery while the poet’s mother meanders among the tombstones. Perhaps notably, the longest poem is not a poem at all, but a review of the writings of an imaginary poet laureate, whose intellectual rise and inevitable fall to age chronicle a life spent in the pain of putting it all on paper. Containing poems both in rhymed format and free verse, this book taps the vulnerability we all feel—and then brings a smile of recognition.
About the Author
Steve Honig has been writing poetry for five decades. Why? Steve suggests it is a defense mechanism against the lack of recognition of emotion in the world. His qualifications for writing poetry are, however, questionable. Asked about his credentials, the author replied: “Just read the poems and decide for yourself.” Classically educated in the Ivy League but better educated in the streets of Brooklyn, Steve Honig has a voice that is sometimes hard-edged, sometimes intensely sensitive, and always unexpected. The personal and the intellectual blend and clash in Steve’s writings; the struggle for feeling and the demands of communication are at an uneasy détente. Steve has four children, widely separated in years. He lives with his wife, his youngest son and a dog whose feet are always muddy, in a Boston suburb. He practices corporate law during the daylight hours. None of which explains the contents of this volume.