Review by Jean Vengua: GLIMPSES and Zen of Doodles

Noah's Poem 2015

the pool was filled with the footfalls of water spirits
as the day went on
the rose leaves inhabit the garden of secrets
devouring the souls of unseen children
quietly disappearing in the place of Time
accepting the inner freedom of people
past and present
neither day or night
can soothe the spirits
of the forgotten memories
turning into black emptiness
erases the people
you once remembered

Zen of Doodles

The Zen of Doodles

Maileen Hamto Reviews GLIMPSES

Review of GLIMPSES by Maileen Hamto

The Wheatfields of Leny Strobel's Memoir by Prosy de La Cruz

Strobel has fused prose and poetry and in 112 pages, there is a structure of keeping each page distinct from one another. There is no binding theme that one might expect from a book, suspend that idea for a bit, and work with the author. Engage each page as she wrote and soon, you get to appreciate she had you in mind that perhaps each night, after work or school, you just have the stamina to be amused by reading just one page. 

I read the book over a period of time, and dog-eared pages: 22 for her description on Filipinos’ musicality and then her recollection of a Filipino choir in the south of France; and 26 for the audacity of cruelty and the violent American culture. She proceeds to offer root causes for this violent culture to perhaps disconnection and isolation, loneliness, fear, shame and anger. She then states that “by the time cruelty becomes audacious there’s already a culture that made that possible.” 

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