Review of Message from the Memoirist by Paul Pines

Tick Tock Tick Tock. Hickory, Dickory, Dock…. The various concepts of scientific time tell us almost nothing with their deconstructing conundrums. Nursery Rhymes do conjure up a sense of play and curiosity but then abandon us to the immediate. Only when time intersects with the eternal or the pinned-down specific does meaning appear, gleaned from the residue of the fiery crossover or the accelerated collision. Paul Pines, in his wonderfully illustrated poetry collection entitled Message from the Memoirist, uncovers precious pieces of memory from the dreamscape of mind and transmutes these quark-like particles into summonses that evoke the true nature of fundamental things. The spectacle or rather spectral results can be unsettling. Or exhilarating. Even funny.

 In tracing his expansive memories back to the “time before thought” Pines, presumably dressed in a cowl and carrying a torch, leads us through a primordial darkness. Shades appear and vanish from our reach. A cock crows and dawn’s light drenches with creation all who have passed over the River Lethe again. For more of my review go here:  http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2017/03/message-from-memoirist-poems-by-paul.html