Advance Review of Djelloul Marbrook's Second Book of Poems Sings Its Praise

Dec. 4, 2010 - PRLog -- Djelloul Marbrook’s second book of poems, Brushstrokes and Glances [http://www.amazon.com/Brushstrokes-glances-Djelloul-Marbrook/dp/0982810016], is winning enthusiastic praise even before its publication date on December 20th. Tom Holmes, writing in The Line Break [http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/djelloul-marbrooks-brushstrokes-and-glances/], says he would like to see each poem hang in a museum next to the painting it mentions.

Describing his responses to the prize-winning poet’s book of poems about paintings, painters and museums, Holmes says:

“The poems in the first part are a reflection or a response to the artwork, or sometimes the artwork is just a trigger for the poem. Sometimes I become so involved in the poem, especially the longer poems like 'Basquiat' and 'Manhattan reef,' that I enter a type of dream world where there is no text and only images. In fact, while reading, my girlfriend asked me a question. I was so far gone in the book that I responded to her, ‘What reality am I in?’ I was gone in a good way. In fact, that experience was exactly what his poem 'Picasso’s bull' asks for.”

“In this collection, you will learn to ‘see between a blink and a sob,’ between artist and art, and between brushstrokes and glances,” writes Holmes, who is the editor of Redactions Poetry [http://www.redactions.com/].

The museums mentioned in the book are The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Chelsea Museum and The Frick Collection in New York City, and The National Gallery of Art and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

Marbrook’s first book of poems, Far From Algiers (Kent State University Press, 2008), won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize in 2007 and the International Book Award in 2010. Brushstrokes and Glances, whose cover is a painting, Approaching Spring, by Irene Rice Pereira, the poet’s aunt, is published by Deerbrook Editions [http://www.deerbrookeditions.com]. It will be available online and in bookstores Dec. 20, 2010.

Coincidentally, Prakash Books, India, is publishing Marbrook’s novel, Artemisia’s Wolf, later this year. This book is an homage to the Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi, and also to Camille Claudel and all the other women artists who, in the poet’s words, have been “oppressed by a culture dominated by men.”

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