The poetry collection Tourist encompasses a journey that unburdens the weight of past guilt and trauma. During this voyage spanning multiple cultures and stages in life, the importance of following one’s inner voice and embracing one’s own path is discovered. Revelations are made in the middle of the night, during a pandemic, in the heart of the forest, at the seaside and in food, snapshots of past and present. Through the wonder and surprise of nature the search for identity is explored, surrendering to what cannot be changed and confronting the mercurial temperament of relationships and how they are perceived, one poem at a time.
The poetry collection Tourist encompasses a journey that unburdens the weight of past guilt and trauma. During this voyage spanning multiple cultures and stages in life, the importance of following one’s inner voice and embracing one’s own path is discovered. Revelations are made in the middle of the night, during a pandemic, in the heart of the forest, at the seaside and in food, snapshots of past and present. Through the wonder and surprise of nature the search for identity is explored, surrendering to what cannot be changed and confronting the mercurial temperament of relationships and how they are perceived, one poem at a time.
TAK Erzinger's collection Tourist acts as a window into a journey through the poet’s experiences as well as the locations in the world she has visited in her life. Her poems such as Chichén Itzá– 1982 and In Between Days bring the reader along with her on this journey. It is hard to choose a favourite poem from this collection. As a whole, they offer a panacea to those who've suffered through the past few years of Covid responses.
-Amos Grieg, Editor-in-Chief, A New Ulster
In her latest poetry collection, Tourist, Erzinger masterfully intertwines the beauty and mystery of nature with the joy and suffering of life. With vivid imagery, she holds up a mirror to the moments that defined her and reflects them back like literary snapshots of landscapes and still life paintings. Erzinger reminds us that the past is never far behind, the present is fickle and fleeting, and the future holds the promise of redemption.
-Cindy Tovar, founder & editor-in-chief of Hispanecdotes
TAK Erzinger’s imagery and metaphor engages us in a world where a woman seeks to understand abandonment, involuntary childlessness, and unconditional love. Readers will enjoy all the stops on this journey that redefine what family could mean. At its heart, Tourist reminds us that what we pass on to future generations surpasses blood ties—and when we love freely and deeply, we create family.
-Liz Whiteacre, author of Hit the Ground and founder of Etchings Press at the
University of Indianapolis
In her collection Tourist, TAK Erzinger invites us on a journey. It’s a deeply personal one: abandonment, discovery, loss and acceptance vie for space on the page. With the help of winged messengers and flora and fauna that creeps, winds and demands we engage, Erzinger presents otherness and connectedness. She leads us through the flux of the human experience with powerful layers of imagery from the natural world.
-Madeleine F. White, author of Mother of Floods
Tourist has a beautiful yearning for connection over trauma, the permanent sideshow of the displaced, and, despite it all, transformation and love.
- Scott Duncan-Fernandez, Senior editor, Somos en escrito Literary Magazine
Tourist by TAK Erzinger is a beautiful compilation of poems that describe the author's journey navigating the struggles of abandonment, infertility, conflicting identities, and romantic relationships. She is able to find solace amongst the trees and under the sky and mountains, and she receives answers from the wild creatures around her. As her spiritual connection to the natural world deepens, she questions the point of man-made divisions and boundaries, realizing that we are all just “tourists” within a world far older than any of us.
I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars, as the poetry was beautifully written and expressed the author’s feelings towards her past and present traumas and struggles through references to the complexity of nature. The way that the poems were arranged to take readers on a journey through Erzinger’s life, starting with the abandonments of her childhood and progressing to further traumas before finding love and acceptance, was a very effective method of story-telling. Erzinger includes a variety of poem structures, which adds to the flow of the story. Her words are carefully chosen, and she offers a heartbreaking baring of her soul as she strives to help others realize the healing powers of the natural world.
I would only recommend this book to people who have a genuine appreciation for poetry, as the book is a compilation of beautiful poems arranged to tell the story of a life. It would probably be best that this book be kept to mature audiences, however, as the journey of coming to terms with parental abandonment and betrayal, infertility, and other traumas may be too mature for younger audiences. I would also recommend this book if you feel a connection to nature and believe that the natural world has much to teach us, as readers with those qualities would be able to strongly relate to Erzinger’s work.