WHISH by Jackie Craven - Reviewed by Claudia Amendola Alzraa

Must read 🏆

A beautifully unique exploration of time - and all that comes with it - making for a unique literary experience

Synopsis

WHAT IF HALF PAST YESTERDAY RETURNS?

Time fools around and messes with human lives in WHISH, winner of the 2024 Press 53 Award for Poetry. Surreal prose blocks follow the uneasy relationship between a wistful narrator and shape-shifting characters—bookkeepers, secretaries, and rogues—who manifest as hours of the day.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“With Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Star Trek as her muses, Jackie Craven subverts time in WHISH. Employing prose poems, a sonnet in block form, haibun, and lineated verse, she compresses and bends hours and decades and centuries into whizzing, neo-surreal gestures. Anesthesia, death, young love, and infidelity all are destabilized as the speaker looks forward and backwards, as clocks continue to look at the speaker and us. WHISH is a triumph of a book! Jackie Craven has a wholly original voice.” —DENISE DUHAMEL, author of Second Story

“These experimental prose poems and hybrid pieces obsess about the ephemeral nature of time—a Kafkaesque portrait of existence—surreal and strange like Dali’s melting clocks. ... If you love the surreal, the experimental, the philosophical, this book of prose poems is for you!” —JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ, author of The Fire Eater and Bad Mexican, Bad American

I haven't read anything like Jackie Craven's Whish — and that's a good thing.

It's truly refreshing to come across profoundly unique literature that can hit deep, even with difficult topics. Craven's work transcends conventional poetry, offering a rare blend of vulnerability and strength. While it took me a few poems to wrap my head around her experience and her expression of that experience, once the clues came together and the painting was unraveled, I was hooked. I devoured every poem, then went back and savored every line a second time in the same sitting. Each reading revealed new layers, deepening my appreciation for her craft.

In fact, I found myself genuinely sympathizing with Craven. The pain and loss she has navigated in her life, masqueraded not so subtly in her prose, is unimaginable. I was guided through her pain while also not being pulled into the drowning of it along with her. I admire this as I often distance myself from literature that requires me to feel as the author has felt. I want to be shown your pain, but I don't wish to carry it for you. Energetically, I aligned with Craven's expression of her pain, and it was clear she didn't need me to bear it to understand it. This delicate balance between empathy and detachment is a testament to Craven's skill as a writer, allowing readers to connect with her journey without being overwhelmed by it.

The themes she explores — grief, memory, resilience, and time — are universal, yet she presents them in a way that feels intensely personal. Through this journey, I hope she realizes she has kept so many alive, their legacy breathing on through her pages. Whish is not just a book to be read; it’s an experience to be felt, one that leaves an lasting mark on the soul.

Reviewed by

A Canadian in France, a bibliophile, logophile, and Francophile. She lives driven by joy and filling her life with passion. When she’s not reading, creative journaling, or writing, she’s lending her clairaudient mediumship abilities to others through her spiritual business Seeking Celestial Grace©

Synopsis