Mark Symczak Review
Five Stars (out of Five)
It hit me how appropriate the title "Veiled Whisperings" truly is. Growing up in the Catholic church, they had this strange practice called Confession, where they lined you up to enter a small box, divided in two sections, only big enough to kneel down opposite a priest, who was sitting in the other section. There was one small window to speak through to the priest but the window was veiled with a dark gauze so you could only see a faint silhouette. You generally kept your voice down to a whisper so the rest of the confessioners in the line could not hear the list of sins you had committed.
This book of poems has that kind of kneeling in the dark confessional mood. Not that Paula Evans Archer is necessarily contrite, but she at least can't be accused of holding out. She's on a roll here and she makes up for her lack of contrition with a healthy dose of counting her blessings.
These poems clear the air. It seems she's been holding these things in and has finally found the way to confess them, both good and bad. Things she may have left unsaid is now austerely but eloquently laid bare.
Read "Being You" a fine example of reviewing a painful topic but not cursing it. Instead, finding its' gifts and embracing them. Or "Us" a straight from the heart summary of the toll of the pile up of the years together with a lifetime partner.
These are the thoughts that sometime overwhelm, late at night when the head is cleared away of the muck of the day's grind and the heart is allowed to rule. These poems connected me to those late night proclamations that close the da
