L.L. Barkat's 'Love, Etc.'

Love, Etc. by L.L. Barkat

Writer and poet L.L. Barkat is blessed with a talent for metaphor, an eye for the spare image that can shimmer like a polished gem, and a sensuous and lyrical voice — gifts she uses beautifully, even profoundly, in her focused new collection of poetry, Love, Etc. (T.S. Poetry Press, March 17, 2014). 

With an enviable economy of words — a trademark — Barkat shows and never, or almost never, tells. For her, love is a fully lived experience — replete with the "Etc." that is by turns playful, suggestive of what could be, mysterious, wistful, carnal, eternal. It is bound complexly in romance, family, and friendship; colored as much by humor and laughter as by hurt and loss. It arises in the still watchfulness of a parent beside a child's bed "on breath-thin nights" ("Ours"); in the long empty space between an open and a closed parenthesis ("Meet Me in a Minimalist Poem Where We Can Wear") — a clever riposte to academy poets and a marvelous metaphor for what always can be left unsaid; in the lines of the hands ("Whispered"); in the acceptance of "a hot kiss of clove and cinnamon" ("Choice"); in the shattering of a glass bangle ("Rabia's Confession") or the sleep that comes before and after ("Fantasy").

No one poem can stand for a single definition of "love", and that is the point. Love needs space, it needs time, it needs (sometimes) an "open mouth" and a "full spoon" of soup ("Spanish Recipe"). It wants a delicate and knowing touch, sure and never forced diction, inspiration and imagination. Above all, it wants the "proof" of a poem, which Barkat delivers in this collection in as many ways as her "untie[d] tongue" and "tiger-eyed" glances can provide. 

Poems

I love them, you know.

All your little beaded words.

The tiger-eyed ones, the Italian

red glass (with the foil inside).

I love the way you line them up,

as on a golden thread. The onyx,

the abalone, even the dark brown

wood ones all carved and oblong.

I keep them in a velvet-throated box,

and when I am alone, I put my fingers

all through their crystal chattering.

Read Love, Etc. all at once, section-by-section, one poem a day, before you say goodnight; but read and return to it often. It rewards and gives back by settling in deep.

And come Valentine's Day, don't forget to tuck a copy of Love, Etc., under the pillow of your lover. You won't need any other words than those in this slim, red-covered volume. It will make its own spark and leave it up to you keep the fire burning.

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L.L. Barkat is the author of six books, including the poetry collection InsideOut (International Arts Movement, 2009), the experimental fiction and poetry titled The Novelist: A Novella (T.S. Poetry Press, 2012), and Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing (T.S. Poetry Press, 2011). Barkat's poems have appeared at VerseWrights, Best American Poetry, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Every Day Poems. The managing editor of TweetSpeak Poetry, Barkat also is a staff writer for The Curator magazine.

Love, Etc. is available in paperback and as an e-book for Kindle and Nook.