Archaic Smile Review

OK everyone. After all the waiting and patience you had, allow me to review "Archaic Smile."

Archaic Smile is a book of Poems by A.E. Stallings, an American Poet currently living in Greece. In fact I would say this move had prompted her ideas to write this set of poems.

Background
"Archaic Smile" is primarily inspired from Greek Myth. In fact the title of the book refers to sculptors in Ancient Greece had given to statues to give them a more realistic look from two types of statues, Kouros, the male statues, and Kore, the female statues and the time period that popularly used them in the B.C./B.C. E. On the jacket cover is a statue of Kore, sometimes depending on interpretation being Persephone's name before she was Hades' wife, or just a regular woman of city life.

Poetic Style
Unlike the modern free verse poetry that popularized the movement, many poets like Robert Frost chose to write and respect the classic norms of poetry. A.E. Stallings follows this movement now currently called New Formalism. New Formalism is a call back to respect rhyme, line, form, rhythm, and meter in poetry. Of course many of us usually read poetry as if it was in a sing song style but the rhythm of poetry is variously different especially with the subject matter. Also, The way the book opens up with "A Postcard from Greece" and ends with "Night Shift" which focuses on an after midnight train ride which is in my opinion, a great way to get us into the world of her poetry and characterizing the leave as like that midnight train ride to look back, sleepless due to the experiences we had when reading these poems.

Poems
"Archaic Smile" is divided into 4 parts of poems: A Beastiary, Underworld, For the Loser of Things and Touring the Labyrinth (Not in that order though) And each poem in the parts are respected with being in other poems in each specific part.  In Underworld, Stallings writes about the two famous myths of the underworld being Persephone and Hades and Orpheus and Eurydice. But what she does with the poems is add on to the story in prose form with Persephone writing to her mother about what the underworld is like and describes how the roots of trees adorn the ceilings of the underworld. But I also love her own unique myths or interpretations of myths as seen in "How the Demons were Assimilated and Became Productive Citizens." 

Imagery
Since all poems use Imagery to conceptualize their ideas, values, and stories, Stallings' imagery is mostly focused on detailed sight and sounds from specific items. Like when Persephone describes the chiming of the shovels unearthing the ground in "Persephone Writes a Letter to her Mother." Primarily her direct usage of the English language also allows her to use words for their lyrical aspects in a similar fashion to the style of plays with dialogue being lyrical in a sense.

Opinion and Review
"Archaic Smile" does a wonderful job with the resource material used to reinterpret, add on, or create myths of all kinds in relation to Greek Myth. The prose, symbols, and imagery used in her poems are all wonderfully used and are quick to read and wonderful To any of my readers who love poetry or want a book of poetry to begin reading poetry, or who love Greek Myth, Archaic smile is a great start and a good book to read as well as giving a unexpected beacon of hope for good art and uplifting art in a postmodern art society. 4.5/5

Archaic Smile is available on Amazon for $15 plus shipping and handling.