Title: A Mother-Father Complex
Author: Anders Wennerstrom
Publisher: XlibrisUK
ISBN: 978-1-5245-9673-6
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 49
Reviewed by: Barbara Miller
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Pacific Book Review
It is often said beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however appreciation of poetry is occasionally in the eye of the poet. As often words have ambiguous meanings and translations from foreign languages result in a loss of precise meanings, this book read in English is from a Swedish author. In author-poet Anders Wennerstrom’s published work titled A Mother-Father Complex, it took me a second reading to better understand the feelings and emotions portrayed.
Rather abstract, Wennerstrom uses the phrases My Dog Father Shadow and My Pussycat Mother Tongue throughout the latter half of the book. It takes some creative license to ponder the associations of such descriptive uses of the dog and cat personalities. The poetry has deeply rooted love, however on the surface the elements of frustration and parental discourse are woven throughout the book. One gets the impression of a love-hate relationship, which would explain the word Complex in the title. Commonly used Freudian phraseology from psychology uses father complex and mother complex as manifestations from the Oedipus complex. Even throughout the book some stanzas within the poems have reference to raw use of sexual organs with unabashed usage.
The book’s galley text is clearly laid out with generous spacing and a minimalist form of presentation. The often bazaar associations of thoughts are interleaved with other lines of simple concepts, resulting in a roller-coaster pace or foot to the beat poetry. Often I needed to pause to think to myself just what does the author mean by such a phrase – is it something lost in translation or accurately used vernacular in meaning? It is extremely perplexing and requires much deciphering. At times ambiguity is often used for the cloaking of real situations, respecting the privacy of the subjects. Those uses are respectful and gentlemanly of which this reader is quite accustomed to respecting. If that indeed was the motivation here, well it is deservingly appreciated.
Overall, A Mother-Father Complex reads as if it were a dream or a surrealistic movie. Strange uses of English are at times difficult to fandom, however as challenging the poems are, it does absorb the reader. It is by no means for any beginner in the poetry genre but more a change of pace for the seasoned connoisseur seeking novel uses of English phrases which he or she have never imagined could be in the same context. Allowing for their minds to be challenged like a crossword puzzle of interpretation.
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