In The Words We Do Not Have , Steve Brisendine brings experience into sharp focus-a road trip with his son, evenings spent playing pool, an abused childhood classmate-along with meditative explorations of life, death, aging, and faith.
Dark, global, nuanced in how it reveals a gritty world." -Tyler Robert Sheldon, Editor-in-Chief of MockingHeart Review and author of Consolation Prize (Finishing Line Press, 2018). but also the knowledge that such might never happen. . .
We learn the title\'s Kilivila meaning: "something everyone knows but no one talks about." Outlining a "slippery downhill way," these grave, sometimes minutial poems (as in "Qarba," the appearance of white hairs in a man\'s beard) highlight how life gives us "hope of reunion .
In "Mokita," a classmate is abused and silent, eventually dead. "When you / walk into it, it pulls." Beginning with the language of wind, Brisbane reveals a dark world through a series of tongues.
Brisendine\'s imaginative lexicon offers us a space where "a heart has/ spilled itself, where Words bloomed/ into something past words." -Janice Northerns, author of Some Electric Hum "We Have enough wind in Kansas," Steve Brisendine opens his excellent new book.
The author employs as a title for each poem an unusual foreign word (along with its definition), a strategy that unifies the collection, while also yielding delightful and unexpected trajectories as the poems unfold.
In The Words We Do Not Have , Steve Brisendine brings experience into sharp focus-a road trip with his son, evenings spent playing pool, an abused childhood classmate-along with meditative explorations of life, death, aging, and faith
