Review Text

Report Text : Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy. It is the capital of region Veneto. Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area. Venice has been known as the “Queen of the Adriatic”, “City of Water”, “City of Bridges”, and “The City of Light”. The city stretches across 117 small islands in the marshy Venetian Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy.

Venice is world-famous for its canals. It is built on an archipelago of 117 islands formed by about 150 canals in a shallow lagoon. The islands on which the city is built are connected by about 400 bridges. In the old center, the canals serve the function of roads, and every form of transport is on water or on foot.

You can ride gondola there. It is the classical Venetian boat which nowadays is mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies. Now, most Venetians travel by motorised waterbuses (“vaporetti”) which ply regular routes along the major canals and between the city’s islands. The city also has many private boats. The only gondolas still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges.

You can see the amusing city’s landmarks such as Piazza San Marco, Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, Saint Mark’s Cathedral or villas of the Veneto. The villas of the Veneto, rural residences for nobles during the Republic, are one of the most interesting aspects of Venetian countryside.

They are surrounded by elegant gardens, suitable for fashionable parties of high society. The city is also well known for its beautiful and romantic view, especially at night.

Review Text (A Book Review)

Rhymes of the Times By        : Harold Matthew Nash 

Publisher                                : Booksurge

Reviewed by                          : John Lehman

   

I particularly liked the first few pages of this book where the poet acknowledges those who have helped him and tells us something about his life. Too often writing is a lonely task and poetry so personal that it excludes others until they read the final result. But both poets and audiences are intimately involved in the process. Readers are not consumers looking for a pair of shoes, but people trying to discover something about how they feel, as well as understand the emotions of the person writing the poem. This spirit of openness and participation is right here from the start in this collection. 

Harold is one of nine children, raised by his mother. In the Introduction he tells us about public moments that have shaped his life (Martin Luther King’s ”I Have a Dream” speech, Muhammad Ali’s “I can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”) as well as very private ones like attending the wedding of a girl he was still very much in love with. This not only gives us an insight into the person behind these poems, it helps us understand their inspiration and connection to things outside of the words. “The Bee in the Web” draws on the “butterfly”/”bee” of Ali’s boast, yet expands on it to a message of racial harmony as opposed to one of militant aggression and separatism.
There are some great titles (“The Martian and the Wino,” “W Stands for Wrong", ”Fasten Your Seatbelt”) and lines that make us think (“Sometimes I feel that life’s a curse, has front-wheel drive and no reverse” and the very poignant “I hate in order to protect yourself—you pack a gun or mace. So why don’t I say what the hell and hate the human race.”) There are also some bad lines: “Her skin is cream, her body is slim. Looking at her makes the average saint sin.”—perhaps, but what or who is “the average saint”? The book ends with a sweet poem by Charla Angeline Hultmann (and I really like the candor of her bio) called “Gift” and “giving” is the real spirit of this book of poetry.
I will be honest, I am not a fan of rhyme. There is a delight in adjacent sounds rubbing together—vowels held and savored, consonants clicking in a row—but “easy” rhymes (“head”/“dead”; “love”/”dove”; “moon”/”prune”) tend to overshadow poetic subtleties, determine word choice and the words themselves lose their meaning, becoming clichés. But this is the music of this poet’s generation, and there is no denying that poetry is more alive, more meaningful and more accessible than it has ever been at any other time during my life. PS I do love the “Osama” “mama” rhyme. In general I think it would benefit Harold Nash’s development to read more of the published contemporary Black poets.
But form aside, this is an honest (courageous and unflinching) look at life today—one we need to share together for the survival of us all. That is “Rhymes of the Times” message. And it is a good one.