The eponymous piece is the best in the volume, and if all of the poems were as good as “Evening Breezes,” the collection would be a pleasure to curl up with.
This volume of prose poetry has a story arc, following the narrator through his initial grief at losing his lover to his final reconciliation with the death. Some would be inclined to label this collection as flash fiction rather than prose poetry, as the narrative impulse seems to overwhelm the language choices.
The main issue with the collection is that rather than crafting tight, evocative imagery, Safronoff tends toward the abstract. For example, there is a paragraph in “Reflection Five: The Funeral,” that would be lovely on its own, which begins:
A terminally ill boy had at last stepped off the plank. He had loved the sea. His peace was once with the sand and the windy, woody airs of never,
It has a nice musicality to it, and the alliteration of “windy” and “woody” is effectively used. However, to get to this section, the reader must wade through sections like the beginning of “Reflection Five”:
Admittedly, there were times when I thought that things would change, that I might change, but in my heart I knew there was no other way.
A minor issue: Each page number occurs twice, and the number “26” (perhaps the age of the lover, Tom, at his death), randomly occurs at the top of the page. If it weren’t for the page number issue, the assumption that the placement of “26” is deliberate would be warranted.
For fans of narrative prose poetry on the long side, EVENING BREEZES has moments of clear beauty set in vague ramblings.
Reviewed by Jodi McMaster for IndieReader