Title: Within and Without
Author: James Richard Hansen
Publisher: ‎ AuthorHouse
ISBN: ‎1546202552
Pages: 62
Genre: Poetry
Reviewed by: David Allen

Read Book Review

When was the last time you saw your world from a dozen dazzling new perspectives? When was the last time you saw yourself in the center of a beautiful dance of creation? One at a time, and read as a whole, James Richard Hansen’s poems take you there.

Hansen brings his wide-eyed uncanny appreciation of the elements, the Pacific, the rain, and acts of the imagination into our lives with these lapidary images and strophes that go down easy but linger in the mind. The poems are deceptively minimal, a few touches of the artist’s brush to the canvas of the soul. But don’t be fooled. The density and impact of haiku and Zen koans are right there too.

A color, a scent, a metaphor, in Hansen’s capable hands, morphs into the unexpected. Synesthesia – a mélange of sight and sound and feeling – is the order of the day.

Consider ‘Inward Journey’:

As night looks through glass doors,
our torchiere lamp casts an eerie glow,
while the pothos plant forms an ominous shadow.
Lights, plants, and furniture create bizarre chiaroscuro
on the walls and floor.
I look inward
like a spelunker on my perennial journey into the abyss.
I feel a little sorry for myself.

…a little sorry for myself right here seems to say it all, conjuring up the unexpected: the nostalgia and regret that might accompany serious (and possibly dangerous) acts of musing and introspection.

‘Attending the Symphony’, much in the same vein, transports effortlessly from the visual to the aural:

I wake from dreams of music
to a symphony of color
visible through the glass door.
Sunlight dances on the flowers and leaves
and sets our garden on fire.
Iridescent dewdrops sparkle,
creating hundreds of tiny rainbows.
The orchestra performs daily.

Hansen’s celebration of nature likewise strikes a magic chord. In several poems he remarks upon the apocryphal ‘green ray’ of certain mystic sunsets. His poems to his soul mate, (second part of the collection), Love Poems to Kristen, written at each anniversary year, sendoff equally supernal rays.

The focus is on harmony, unity, beauty. These poems are lyrical dewdrops, distillations of Whitmanesque enthusiasms minus the excess. They are also recipes for living. Poetry aficionados, poetasters, and poetry newbies as well, will all appreciate this chapbook.

Enjoy