HCSHR 3:2 — John Stevenson, Emoji Moon.

HCSHR 3:2 — John Stevenson, Emoji Moon. Winchester VA: Redmoon Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-1-947271-31-9. unpaginated. redmoonpress.com

reviewed by Sandra Stephenson

Reading John Stevenson’s emoji moon didn’t feel like homework.  This is a companion book, youthful and fun. I don’t need to note every poem’s merits, or even pay much attention as I read. They invite the reader to return and reread. I recognized comic book characters and crystal humour. The book is

expecting
no one
arrives

John Stevenson has a voice. That’s hard to accomplish in a smattering of poems of three lines, even if you toss in the occasional prose or fifth line. The book, emoji moon, has a voice. It is wistful and matter of fact, rich with puzzles to be solved such as cataracts and minor falls lined up with a young, rather than an old river. There are scenarios to be built by the reader, like “riding shotgun/ in the sportscar/ a sapling[.]” And always the double meaning, even in a nostalgic contemplation of retirement in which his rope still sometimes has twang and sometimes hangs loose!

The progression of seasons of the year twinned with life seasons through the book is a nice doff of the hat to haiku tradition, but the poems are completely themselves, giving reason to the subtitle, “haiku and related text.” Of my favorite poems, I especially like this one.

mitten on the path
everything now
belongs to spring

As well, I can appreciate the stern and vaguely surprised tone in his cherry-blossom poem: “I am a father.” Perhaps the best poems of the collection arrive right at the end, immediately following my least favorite haibun that wounds with its name-calling and middle-of-the-road intent.  The final poems are the least concrete, appropriate for late life.  Ending with a one-liner on simplicity is brilliant, and Stevenson’s comment on age stands by itself.

lonely
having the best
memory

Let me set one of my own poems, wry and bitter, next to his which is sunny and uncomplicated.

Mother’s Day the boys and their father spend the day in bed                      Sandra Stephenson

Mother’s Day morning one child knows the formula for coffee                        John Stevenson

Now you can readily see the attraction of John Stevenson’s work.

                                                                                               Sandra Stephenson
                                                                                               March, 2020

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