{"id":803,"date":"2025-01-25T17:03:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T22:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=803"},"modified":"2025-01-25T17:03:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T22:03:15","slug":"review-of-testament-by-luke-hankins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"Review of Testament by Luke Hankins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Luke Hankins. Testament. <\/em>Texas Review Press, 2023. 21 pgs. $16.95.<\/p>\n

Testament, <\/em>this small collection by Luke Hankins, his third, accomplishes what chapbooks can do so well\u2014thematically the poems are closely enough linked to warrant publishing them together like this rather than as a portion of a larger collection, and each poem is strong, making the collection feel weightier than the Table of Contents\u2019 list of fifteen (often short) poems might suggest. Several of the poems are clearly set in 21st<\/sup> century America, not so much because they refer to specific events as because they are infused with a constant awareness of violence, especially gun violence. Others, though, recall grace and tenderness so that as much as we might be tempted by despair, the poems urge us gently, gently, toward hope.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening poem, \u201cCategory Error,\u201d in its entirety:<\/p>\n

Hummingbirds are fighting
\nover the flowers in the garden again,
\nbecause beauty doesn\u2019t make anything
\nimmune to cruelty.<\/p>\n

Imagine a world in which each
\nbeautiful creature could be trusted\u2014
\nand isn\u2019t each creature beautiful?<\/p>\n

The sleek, streaked coat of the tiger.
\nThe iridescent scales of the snake.
\nThe shockingly blue eyes
\nof the shooter on the evening news.<\/p>\n

The last line is so memorable in part because it\u2019s so unexpected. Until this point, the poem has seemed to be about the cruelty of what we call nature, the categories we\u2019ve created to position creatures as \u201cpredator\u201d or \u201cprey,\u201d creatures red in tooth and claw as they struggle against others for survival. Yet if we reread the poem, we can see that each line prepares us for the last, so that after we finish reading, the last line has acquired that sense of inevitability that characterizes so many good poems.<\/p>\n

As is true with so many of the poems in this collection, Hankins\u2019 effective but subtle craft choices contribute to the poem\u2019s thematic resonance. The first two lines are about as syntactically straightforward\u2014subject, verb, prepositional phrases\u2014as a sentence in English can get. While the words \u201cHummingbirds\u201d and \u201cflowers\u201d might seem conventionally, even stereotypically, poetic, the syntax, typical of fact-based objective writing, challenges any expectation that this poem will proceed according to Romantic interpretations of nature. Although the next several lines become more abstract, the meaning avoids becoming vague, partly because the language retains some concrete reference, e.g. \u201cbeautiful creature,\u201d even in the midst of abstraction. In stanza two, the speaker is asking a real question\u2014readers might be initially tempted to respond \u201cof course,\u201d but then think, \u201cwell, wait a minute\u201d before they return to the affirmative. Finally, in stanza three, we return to concrete and specific examples, the \u201ctiger\u201d and \u201csnake\u201d perfectly representative of creatures that both fascinate and threaten. At the description \u201cshockingly blue eyes,\u201d some readers\u2019 imaginations might drift toward the human, though others likely envision white tigers or other domesticated animals. Even those who think \u201chuman\u201d here, however, are unlikely to anticipate that final line.<\/p>\n

The final stanza is particularly musical. Hankins incorporates nearly every sonic device aside from end rhyme. There\u2019s an abundance of alliteration: \u201csleek, streaked\u2026scales\u2026snake\u201d and \u201cshockingly\u2026shooter.\u201d There\u2019s lots of assonance: \u201csleek, streaked\u201d and \u201cscales\u2026snake\u201d and \u201cblue\u2026shooter\u2026news.\u201d \u201cSleek\u201d and \u201cstreaked\u201d also form an internal rhyme. This music is exceptionally attractive, even as the content becomes much less comfortable.<\/p>\n

This poem is not written to comfort readers, nor to reassure us that all, in the words of Julian of Norwich, will be well. Indeed, all might not be well, and readers are left to answer for themselves the poem\u2019s central question: how can a creature who is a murderer, perhaps a mass murderer, perhaps a mass murderer of children, nevertheless be \u201cbeautiful\u201d? \u201cCategory Error\u201d is an ideal poem to open this collection, for it represents Hankins\u2019 style as well as the understated tone and probing content of many of the other poems.<\/p>\n

The title poem, \u201cTestament,\u201d is more personal; that is, the first-person speaker seems to be speaking of his own experience. It begins with a bit of linguistic delight: \u201cI haven\u2019t lived terribly well– \/ but I probably haven\u2019t lived terribly, either.\u201d In this, he resembles most of us. He has suffered defeat and despair, described as a \u201cnight-gilded chariot,\u201d a type of vehicle driven by another who might have absolutely no concern for him. Nevertheless, he has also \u201cjust as surely fallen at the hands \/ of beauty, plain delight\u2014utter \/ \/ surrender.\u201d He is a human being caught in the throes of the human condition. This poem is exceptionally controlled, and at thirteen short lines exactly as long as it needs to be. Its language is tight, and the stanzas, all either one or two lines, contribute to its clean appearance on the page. Despite its content, in other words, its exploration of extreme emotional states, the poem itself is meditative.<\/p>\n

Many of the poems in Testament <\/em>are equally meditative. They vary widely in form, however. Hankins seems equally comfortable writing a villanelle or prose poem as he is writing free verse\u2014and even the free verse poems explore form differently from one another. It doesn\u2019t seem fair to say I wish such a carefully constructed book were longer, so I won\u2019t say that. Instead, I\u2019ll say that we should all be looking forward to the poems Hankins will publish next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke Hankins. Testament. Texas Review Press, 2023. 21 pgs. $16.95. Testament, this small collection by Luke Hankins, his third, accomplishes what chapbooks can do so well\u2014thematically the poems are closely enough linked to warrant publishing them together like this rather than as a portion of a larger collection, and each poem is strong, making the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[72,74,73],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-luke-hankins","tag-poetry","tag-testament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}