Place Where Light Is
POEMS
by
ALEXANDER SHAUMYAN
Now available as 4 1/4" by
7" paperback (115 pages). US $12 (includes mailing cost).
Review
of Place Where Light Is by
Laurel Johnson of Midwest Book Review
MBR Bookwatch, November 2003
Place Where Light Is
Alexander Shaumyan
ashaumyan@hotmail.com for orders
ISBN 1591962966 $10.00 paperback
In these cold rainy nights,
In thee streets, in these dreams
I'll walk in my solitude
To a place where light is.
Place Where Light Is has been aptly named. Mr. Shaumyan zeroes in on
contemporary topics - war, oil, greed, political chicanery, the shock
of 9/11 - and shines his unblinking light for us to see beneath the
surface. He sets the tone early on with "Hope Is":
Hope is a song that lifts
A man beyond his time,
It feeds the hungry with its gifts,
Yet never spends a dime.
In "A Toast to the World", he skewers just about everything modern man
holds dear, and rightly so:
Let us make this world safe for bureaucracy
And let's embrace patriotic pomposity
and intellectual precocity and Nicaraguan atrocity,
Love in all its many forms is well represented, as always, in this
poet's work. I particularly liked this excerpt from "Razor-Sharp Love":
a fleeting memory
of your caressing tongue
on my chest
that's what you are
a black veil of
loneliness.
He cries out for human rights and speaks for the unheard masses. "The
New World Manifesto" was brilliant. I excerpt here a small portion of
his long poem:
We the people are living breathing human beings and not
mere machines manipulated by the media
And finally, he hits the nail on the head in "Politics Sucks!":
There is a deep freeze
over Washington that
numbs the hearts of
politicians and makes
them deaf and blind to
the real needs of the
people....
Alexander Shaumyan is a new voice crying in the wilderness.
Sometimes humble, often profane and touched with sorrow, his poetry
speaks truth.
Email me if you'd like to get a copy.
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