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God's Cowlick
by Michael Feld Simon
98 pages 66 poems
Genre: Poetry
Format: 5" x 8" Perfect Bound
Price: $10.00
Publisher: Chickaree Publishing
ISBN: 979-8-3733-0207-4
To Order: Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
I do not know if poet Michael Feld Simon has a cowlick or not. I’m thinking that if he does this happenstance may have influenced his choice of titles. A cowlick, according to Wikipedia, "is a section of hair that lies at an angle or is otherwise contrary to the intended style." As I read through Simon’s superb new collection, God’s Cowlick, I find the poems just a bit odd, just a tad off-center. When I say “odd” or “off-center,” I mean it in a good way. We need a stray strand of hair in our lives; we need people, ideas, perspectives that make us scratch our heads, that stop us in our tracks, causing us to consider things from a different angle.
Cowlicks in Titles
When I judge poetry contests, I always look for interesting and imaginative titles. If the title grabs me the poem is pushed to the front of my list. This collection abounds in great titles: “The Chisel to Lay Open,” “You Have Gone by without Finding Both,” I Was Going to Write Heart-Stoppingly,” “At Birth We Are Flowering Waterfalls,” and “Conversation with Mrs. Gottrocks Aboard the Crystal Irony.”
A Poet Who Just Makes Stuff Up
I was delighted upon reading these very words by Simon in the acknowledgements section. Who among us hasn’t longed to simply let ourselves go serendipitously, if you will, to see where the muse takes the poem? My goal in this review is to showcase the fun and wisdom at the end of Michael Feld Simon’s pen.
Looking for Cowlicks
Here’s one in the delightful, “Murph and I Fish for Verse Trout”:
Coming downstream, the water is white.
The Prestone and emerald greens refract
as the loud splashings fade and the river’s
curve becomes a broad embrace.
Casting walks-on-the-water flies
upstream, casting shadows, sleeping
on the water, downstream,
we are set to lure the predators.
Waiting, knee-deep in the curving
fabric and bending rays, on edge
for the snap when the rainbow lunges
and the universe gets swallowed whole.
Simon’s title is God’s Cowlick. I see a touch of God in this poem. I see the Creator’s wisdom and the poet’s tongue-in-cheek nod to it. After all, the trout has its own universe. For the trout, the splash and grab of “walks-on-water-flies,” is his universe which he swallows whole. Human beings, at their best, take the idea of “universe” to a deeper level. Other features that show Simon’s command of craft include: visual language displaying color and action, setting an ambience of shadow and “bending rays,” and finally, the force with which the rainbow lunges for the enticing meal. I feel the fish’s power in the spray of his lunge.
My next cowlick, “Pillow Talk,” set me to thinking. Of course, thinking is the poet’s intent … to raise up a cowlick challenging the reader to somehow plaster it down.
Just now, the sun is level with the hilltop,
illuminating the treetops in blue sky.
Today’s fog is thinner up here, it glows like moonbeams.
The lower two-thirds of the forest and the hill
are obscure. We soak in the setting sun, the tree
trunks are lit blue, their shadows focus the mist.
Later, at bedtime, will you remember this beauty,
Wondering, ‘Is this what holy feels like?’ or will you
think of temperature, humidity, pressure, light and shadow?
The poet, situated atop a hill, sees something more. But what is this “something more”? I am reminded of the clergyman who pontificates about heaven and the next life, seeming to know all about it. However, this same person is oblivious to how the sun illuminates trees against the pastel blue sky, who fails to be mesmerized by misty shadows playing at close of day. The poem places the forensic in tension with the playfulness of God. Pretty deep stuff … these cowlick’s of Michael Feld Simon.
For all the fun in God’s Cowlick, the book has a serious undertone. Experiencing this requires some effort, not unlike managing a real cowlick. In this excerpt from “Speaking the Word Divine,” Simon avers:
Words fall short like our thoughts,
like our ability for thought.
Short like differential heating or
temperature induced pressure
variations, like currents, like
all of our attempts to net wind
in our how-to–how-come way.
Get yourself a copy of God’s Cowlick. I promise you will put it down with a smile, you will walk with a lighter step … and perhaps learn, as did I, the joy of speaking the word, Divine.
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