So I’m about a month behind on everything, including my blogging. I couldn’t skip out on finishing this blog post though! In early August, “Searching for a Pulse”, by my good friend Nazifa Islam, was released by Whitepoint Press! This book is a poetry collection which tells the story of Rosemary and her group of friends. Every time I read it I find some new angle I didn’t notice before, so to be honest I’m still figuring the story out.
The book has one of my favorite poems by Nazifa, “The Room is Paneled in Black and White Tile.” I remember reading this poem a while back when Nazifa sent some of her poems to me and some other friends to help her pick out which to send out for a publication or something. This one immediately stuck out to me. Sometimes when I’m reading short articles, I skip the title because I feel like it’s not necessary since I can read the whole article pretty quick. When I first read the poem, I skipped the title and jumped right to the poem itself. By itself, its a very intriguing story because it doesn’t really have any context around it, it jumps right into a piece of Rosemary’s life. After reading it I took another look and read the title. For this poem, the title isn’t a line from it or even a line describing the whole poem, it ended up painting a new picture in my mind the next time I read it, and I felt like I was starting to see the world through Rosemary’s eyes. Nazifa follows a similar style throughout the whole collection, where each title adds an important piece of interestingness (spellcheck thinks that’s not a word??) to the poems, and I keep finding myself fitting the title into each poem like a puzzle piece in my mind.
If you’re into intriguing poetry, you should definitely order yourself a copy! You can order it from the following locations:
Whitepoint Press
Amazon
And you can follow Nazifa’s updates on her website: http://www.nazifaislam.com/
Eric