Publisher:
Independently published
Publication Date:
01/11/2024
Copyright Date:
N/A
ISBN:
979-8875782657
Binding:
Paperback
U.S. SRP:
11.99
WAKING UP AT THE GATES: POEMS OF RECOVERY, HEALING, & TRANSFORMATION
By T. Kudla
- Posted by IR Staff
- |
WAKING UP AT THE GATES chronicles Thomas Kudla’s journey from disillusionment with the working world to embracing the creative life. With self-deprecating wit, accessible language, and flashes of hard-won enlightenment, Thomas Kudla finds unexpected wisdom and humor in the rituals of the everyday.
In his poetry collection WAKING UP AT THE GATES: POEMS OF RECOVERY, HEALING, & TRANSFORMATION, Thomas Kudla chronicles a journey from constraint to freedom, from suffering to healing, and from isolation to connection—finding humor and transcendence in the fierce interior landscapes of the imagination. He employs a range of typefaces and visual elements to mirror and amplify his poems’ thematic concerns. Namely, the search for meaning and spiritual wholeness in a world that often feels absurd and hostile to the individual spirit; the yearning for connection and community in an age of isolation, polarization, and hyper-individualism; and the role of art and the artist in resisting conformity.
The collection’s first poem, “NewLEAF,” urges the reader to embrace a sense of possibility and potential in the face of failure and hardship: “Life is only worth living if you are willing to persevere and keep trying regardless of previous mistakes or setbacks.” The following poem, “Do Nothing,” introduces the reader to Kudla’s penchant for irreverent wordplay and typographical idiosyncrasies as it repeats the phrase “Do nothing”—cycling through variations (“Do no thing,” “Do know thing,” “Do know nothing”) in a meditation on knowing, being, and nothingness.
Kudla’s inventiveness is a crucial component of his poetic vision. The fractured mosaic of “One of Those Long-Lost Puzzle Pieces” is a playful reflection on the poet’s sense of dislocation: “kids think / I’m lame / while the elderly / think I’m weird.” There is also “Thank you for reading, Friend,” a prose poem in the form of a personal letter detailing his liberation from the need for external validation or material success. In these works and others, Kudla combines formal experimentation with confessional vulnerability to convey the restless energy of a mind struggling to derive meaning from life’s messiness.
WAKING UP AT THE GATES is about resilience, renewal, and the mind’s ability to alchemize suffering into art—chaos into meaning. Formally adventurous but sincere and open-hearted, Kudla’s verse embodies the fundamental human hunger for meaning and connection on the journey toward authenticity and awakening. To read these poems is to discover (in the author’s words) “something absolutely / sublime & very nearly divine” amid the wreckage of the quotidian, and to emerge from the experience forever changed.
With self-deprecating wit, accessible language, and flashes of hard-won enlightenment, Thomas Kudla’s WAKING UP AT THE GATES: POEMS OF RECOVERY, HEALING, & TRANSFORMATION finds unexpected wisdom and humor in the rituals of the everyday.
~Edward Sung for IndieReader
Publisher:
Independently published
Publication Date:
01/11/2024
Copyright Date:
N/A
ISBN:
979-8875782657
Binding:
Paperback
U.S. SRP:
11.99
- Posted by IR Staff
- |
Prolific poet Thomas Kudla’s latest volume, WAKING UP AT THE GATES, explores ways of being and healing in hauntingly beautiful ways. Broken down into sections such as “Working”, “Living”, “Writing”, “Thinking”, and “Being”, each section has a series of poems that both stand on their own and build to a cohesive whole, with each section building on the previous one. It’s a tour de force of both the power of the individual poems and how they build into the whole book, supporting a theme of healing to wholeness. It explores ways to ground when one flails, sitting with grief, and building into hope. “Caged Singalong”, “One of Those Long-Lost Puzzle Pieces”, “That Poet’s Likely Story” and “Thoughts at Midnight as Another Year Passes into the Next” are especially resonant. In all the poems and prose poems, the crisp imagery and precision of language give the reader a sensory, visceral experience. WAKING UP AT THE GATES is a book to read through, then go back and dip into frequently, because each re-reading reveals another layer of beauty and meaning.
WAKING UP AT THE GATES: POEMS OF RECOVERY, HEALING, & TRANSFORMATION
T. Kudla
Independently published
979-8875782657
Rated 4.6 / 5 based on 1 review.