Book Review

Title: She Dreams In Red

Author: Alexis Kienlen

Publisher: Frontenac House

Published: 2007

Category: Poetry

Pages: 87

ISBN: 978-1-897181-12-6

$15.95 

4 ½ Stars 

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey 

I’m almost convinced Kienlen’s poetry is filtered through an ethereal force of nature. Already a proficient writer for innumerable publications, this enigmatic Heinz 57 loves her mixed heritage and is constantly challenged by its prism-like sides. Chinese, French, German, English & Scottish…nope not a role call for the UN, it is what cultural aspects Kienlen is made up of. A poetess of the highest calibre, she streams her circular thoughts together into tidy directions. Divvying up her world perceptions into five distinct segments in her first book of poetry She Dreams In Red; Chinese Café, Indonesia, Mongolia, Tibet and Love & Lust. Each section has its own voice about family history, generations, perceptions, culturalism, religious warfare, and passions.  

Each section is robustly orb-like in nature, but also a string of pearls when connected. Kienlen is telling a human story pieced together through her own memory bank. If you can bare to separate yourself from her poems about being of Chinese descent in Canada, or can remove yourself from the strife and struggle she speaks of about the Tibetan Monks, then something you simply can’t side-step that will push you to reference your emotions back to all the previous sections in She Dreams In Red, is the last one…Love & Lust. For as Kienlen perceptively acknowledges…we’ve all felt some level of that.   

 Kienlen`s poems resonate, such as Talking In Other Countries: 

They think I am rude,

I try to talk but end up confusing,

Try to explain, but the words circle round,

My words are too light,

They only evaporate on the air. 

I try to speak less,

Try to swallow my words, 

I find that my words nourish me,

I build up a cellar inside myself,

Digest the flavour,

Of my words.  

She builds her poems from truths and universal experiences. Even though I am not of Chinese descent, I am of mixed (as most people are now) and can acknowledge how the patchwork past fills the importance of our todays, as Kienlen vibrantly showcases in her poetry. 

Love & Lust, heralds subsequently a differing rhythm of poems filled with wants, needs and happy moments isolated to the crevices of her past. Kienlen tells an honest and naked story of her previous interludes; such poetry is both seducing and cerebral.    

Overall a hugely intelligent, emotive and enigmatic first work from Kienlen; it will be exciting to see where this author goes next.