Poetry and artwork - Henry Denander

The Poems in, The Accidental Navigator, are conversations with the reader and each verse suggests a complete understanding as to the nature of silence in people, place and objects. Denanderspeaks to us with a quiet voice that only someone who lives with himself, can write. We are attached to every word because the poems are ours. They are a universal plea, greeting, peaceful humor that makes for serenity and Denander is a master at making the reader comfortable with all that life offers and takes and causes:

 

“i have read quite a few poems by

this American poet, I like them all

and especially the way he ends

his narrative poems without a tag

and an obvious ending.

Everything's just hanging in the air

for you to catch.

 

I will try to do the same and close one of

my prose poems without

my usual tag line.

 

Maybe in my next poem.”

 

The tag lines are full of laughter and we catch the irony or the astute observations:

 

“while changing planes in Vienna

I took my son to the Men's room

and he asked me about the condom

dispenser on the wall.

 

“i don't know, maybe it's soap or

something,” I said.

 

I didn't feel the time and the place

was right for going through these

matters with my eight year old son.

 

“No, it's not soap,” he said, “and it

says LOVE on them.”

 

We had to rush to the plane and he

dropped his investigation.

 

Soon I will have to explain these

matters for him, though.

 

But if he knows about LOVE

already, maybe it will be easy to

explain the rest.”

 

The book is a compilation of new poems, with a smidgen of older poems, and the short story is all that the poems are and more:

 

“The next morning I am early for my meeting with Despina 

Aspro. The sun isn't hot yet and there is a nice breeze. I see her 

coming from the far end of the port, heading straight at me in

her bare feet on the old stones. She is a beautiful Greek woman,

maybe in her early twenties, with long dark hair and beautiful

clear blue eyes. She moves like she is completely unaware of

her looks, unconscious of how the thin cotton dress shows her

beautiful young body...”

 

What a delight; reading this book is a pleasure, it is a walk at low tide, finding clear pebbles, the rush of tide, the blue sky, children playing; people meander along the shore, enjoying the day. It is Sunday after church, or after a large family breakfast, or an early nap on a lounge chair. What a relief; a book I can love.

 

“She kisses me on both cheeks in the typical Greek way when we

introduce ourselves. She looks like a Greek Princess. I wonder how

she could have known it was me?”

 

 

Irene Koronas

Poetry Editor