Discovery —by Don Krieger

Nonfiction / poetry

Cyberwit.net

June 2020

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9389690870

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 9789389690873

100 Pages

5 Stars

I love a book that makes me think, that pulls my mind in different directions, that stretches my very being so I can never shrink back to my original dimensions. Discovery is just such a book. Although Mr. Krieger is an extremely intelligent man (he is a biomedical researcher who worked on-call for 18 years as clinical neurophysiologist for high-risk surgical procedures,) his poetry is accessible to anyone who wants to read it. And I hope you are one of those people!

I was grabbed by the Prologue, when I read, “Lately people talk faster than I can listen”. It’s so reassuring that I am not alone.

Many of the poems have QR Barcodes at the bottom of the page. If you scan one, you will be taken to a reading of that poem by Don Krieger.

1970 is a short poem, powerful. “I was in that first lottery, / drawn by birthday, 341, / no worries. / … / so many I knew / gone.” The poetry in this book is honest and emotional, it is not ‘sweet’.

Stranger at the Door tells us of a young Don who biked to school, and the weather turned sour, and school let out early so he biked home, turned on his street and “…the wind came…like a wall, then the rain and the roar, flying branches and lightning.” The sky was black, and this cub scout (in his uniform) went to the nearest door and was told “You can wait on the porch.” OMG. That brought all my maternal instincts to the fore and I just want to reach back to that day and time and clobber the unfeeling adult and hold the little boy.

We go from Eighth Grade Shop to discover Obeah, a spiritual practice of the Igbo of Nigeria and farther along, we discover what it is like to be part of a surgical team to the last piece, That Which Is Missing, “If a critic describes a piece as difficult, maybe it / is and maybe it isn’t, but surely he means that he understands it.” This piece explains why he writes, and how he writes. It, alone, is worth the price of the book. (But then, I said that about almost all the poems in this book!)

“I write because I have something to say. I remove things because / I want that something to move you because it moved me.” Mr. Krieger writes honest poetry, in whatever form it works best, and will stretch your mind so it can never return to its beginning dimensions.

                                                                                           -Lenora Good