Deon Marcus' Sonatas Reviewed

Review of Deon Marcus' poetry collection Sonatas from www.poetrybulawayoreviews.blogspot.com

Deon is a musician, a member of the Bulawayo Philharmonic Orchestra. The title Sonatas could be expected from a musician. The title also fits like a glove (forgive the cliché) as most of the poems are musical.

Reading this collection of poetry by Deon Marcus, it is not difficult to understand why he won a NAMA award for Best First Book 2005 and Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association award for Poetry and Drama 2005.

My firm belief is that poetry should be accessible; I am unwilling to develop a headache trying to understand what a poet is talking about. There is the myth that poetry should be abstract for it to be good. For the majority of Deon’s poems, you do not develop a headache trying to understand what he is talking about and the subject matter is relevant, take for example the poem The Erl-king:

What ever happened to those Sunday

afternoons when time for a moment stood

quite still, when poetry was read with tea and

scones and Schubert lieder filled the air with their

spinning wheels and Erl-king tales?

What ever happened to walks at Hillside

Dams and sitting sunning summer brows with

silky sweat and melting ice-cream cones and coke...

You can detect some musicality in Deon’s poems; the arrangement is not what I, who is totally tone deaf and without rhythm, would do. Deon’s collection is a must have for poetry lovers. I cannot resist sharing the very short poem Intermezzo:

A collage of moments nailed

together in the hope of making

something pretty?