Subtle style, powerful messages

Title: 101 Perceptions Thoughts and Reflections, Volume 1

Author: Norman Newman

Publisher: Rastason Vibrations

Reviewer: Paul H. Williams

Don't expect these verses to be grand in their diction and style, nor replete with gaudy literary devices. They are to the point in an easy and unaffected way, powerful without being cryptic they are. What you read is what is meant. The messages they convey are food for thought, coming from a writer who seems to have a point of view on virtually every major issue affecting humanity.

Injustice, which Newman subtly and directly opposes in his lines, is a popular motif. "What sort of justice will there be?/When the stereotypes dominate/Popular sentiments/And the ensuing actions/Are filled with biases/As within any given society/Some are labelled and victimised ... ."

Injustice's constant companions, double standards and hypocrisy, are not spared by Newman's pen. He lashes them with: "What hypocrites you have become/Sitting in silence/While innocent blood is being spilt/Never mindful of those dying under the gun/Once the trigger finger is your law and order/Your country, your friends/In the name of God/I want to hear you/Crying for the loss of life/Not only when the life is lost/Belong to kin, friend and country."

injustice

For those who sit and allow the injustice to be perpetuated, he observes: "I don't hear you crying for justice/The justice that could stop the blood/I don't hear you telling these leaders/To seek the justice so as to have peace/I only hear you crying/When leaders' ambitions are thwarted/When the blood for injustice is running."

Brotherly love, the reverence for and the destruction of Earth also get some attention. So do friendship, children, mothers, fear, human rights, rebellion, war and the paradoxes of life. Slavery and racism are included, for, in 'That race', Newman declares, "That race of people/torn away from a homeland/Viciously uprooted/Systematically oppressed/Slaughtered to satisfy some bloodlust/A people lied to, cheated from/Humiliated because of who they are/Used and refused at home and abroad/Taught to see themselves as inferiors/A people black and shiny as ebony."

The poems are serious and reflective in tone; they are not playful and trite, written just for being written. But amid that militant sense of purpose, the poet also exposes his softer side, the romantic part of him, adding to the dynamism of the themes. In 'Needs', he pleads, "Come love me/I need to love/Tender touches/Of you woman/So necessary/To maintain/The man within."

To Shannon, in 'Woman of My Admiration', he salivates with "gazing upon your person/Shapely, curvaceous, desirous/I am acutely aware of wants and needs/Have yearning to be of your desire/to follow the contours of your shape and curves ... ."

The ranges of his emotions come out in 'God must be first: "Oh God/What has become of us/I look in the mirror/And I am sad/And my spirit become heavy/I look at my sister/I want to cry/I look at my people/And I want to do so much/I look in the mirror/And I am afraid."

In 'A condition', the boiling point is reached when "this sadness I feel/Sadness transforming into frustration/Frustration into rage/Rage intensifying the sadness/Such a vicious cycle/Creating a condition."

And he's prepared to bare more of himself as he asks in 'In search of me', "Would you like to know me/Peer into the/Abyss of my soul/Look behind my/Closed doors/See my fears/Frustrations, degradations/ ... And then would you/Claim to know me?"

101 Perceptions Thoughts and Reflections, Volume 1 is one man's perspective on what he sees happening around him. He reflects on the situation as they are, writes about them from his point of view, and shares them with us so that we may act.

Norman Newman

subliminally protesting

The poems are subliminally protesting the current state of humanity, but they are also saying to us that we can stymie the decadence into which we seem to be free-falling. By writing them, Newman is reminding us to take responsibility for our actions, our shortcomings.

"Accepting truths poses a problem/Now the onus is on you/Cause, hear comes the responsibility/No more hiding behind an excuse/Cause your actions are there to see/Reflecting the truths you live by," he writes in 'Truths'.