The poems of SONGS FOR SOLO VOICE are like passages in a mournful cantata without accompaniment, told by the sometimes darkly humorous voice of a man stunned by the abrupt ending of a passionate love affair. The author, also a lawyer and professor, is dean of the John P. Burke School of Public Service and Education at Connecticut’s Post University.  The legal art of persuasion emerges in a few of the poems in SONGS,  such as the opening piece How to Talk Your Way through Abandonment. However, as the title indicates, music is the strongest thematic element throughout the collection, which is divided into four sections. The first contains Overture, which gives the reader a sampling of what is to come in the relationship — an “opus” never meant to be despite an “oh-so-glorious beginning.” The fourth section shows the man moving toward optimism in Coda, in which he decides “even if unaccompanied/ to sing once more.” Much of the book is an extended backward look at what went wrong.  But in one of the first poems, Retrospective, the spurned lover ponders the dangers of hindsight, because “no matter the penalty, there is always/ some compelling reason to look back.”

Whitley lightens the poem with sarcasm. Considering the biblical story of Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt after taking a forbidden look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the spurned lover suggests that she did it “perhaps suddenly realizing that she’d left/ the family poodle chained in the garage….” Whitley’s mordant humor recurs throughout, brightening the gloom as in Thirteen Ways to Deny an Ending, which offers this tip: “Rub raw onion (or any handy irritant) in your eyes and renew your faith in chemistry.”  It recalls the arch humor of Paul Simon’s song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.

In his poems, the author pays homage to an eclectic array of artistic and cultural figures yet only explains a limited number in notes at the end of the book. More notes might improve readers’ understanding of Whitley’s poems, including Trembling Deliciously, which sends up as “maudlin” the 1900 opera Louise by French composer Gustave Charpentier. Mysteries of homage aside, Whitley’s poems form an elegant, darkly humorous, emotionally charged story arc worthy of discussion. Dark humor aids his slow emotional recovery and lightens the melancholy.

In addition to this volume, Whitley has written five other collections of poetry, including This Is the Red Door, winner of the 2010 Massachusetts Book Award. SONGS FOR SOLO VOICE won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize.

In his SONGS FOR SOLO VOICE, James R. Whitley’s poems form an elegant, darkly humorous, emotionally charged story arc worthy of discussion.

~Alicia Rudnicki for IndieReader