Fjords Reviews

HOME | BOOK REVIEWS | Review of Eve Asks by Christine Redman-Waldeyer
Eve Asks by Christine Redman-Waldeyer

 

 

Fjords Review, Jessica Treadway, Please Come Back to Me

Eve Asks

by Christine Redman-Waldeyer

Passaic, New Jersey. Muse Pie Press.
50 Pages. $10

Reviewed by Christina Francine

Fjords Review, Christine Redman-Waldeyer
Christine
Redman-Waldeyer

 

Eve Asks is both the title of this collection of 35 poems and the title of a poem from the book. Redman-Waldeyer skillfully articulates, through her poem, Eve's predicament of being caged and profiles women's psyche while inside the cage. Other points come from quick thoughts and poem topics. Redman-Waldeyer skillfully balances complex and simple sentences keeping reader's minds in motion and their senses awake.

In the poem, Eve Asks, Eve asks for Adam's help. She doesn't tell him, beg him, or silently begrudge him. Instead, Eve asks. She needs Adam's help. Readers also learn Eve wants to be first in his life, rather than second or third.

The poet reminds readers that Adam and Eve are God's first children and that God is both mother and father to them: "though Adam's Father/is also mother." Eve reminds Adam to remember that the curves that attract him to her, and the curves that allow her to bare children, also make her strong, the kind of strong that takes more than she realized, more than he realizes.

Adam believes he already knows what Eve needs and sees her as unappreciative. As a result, Adam's inability to translate Eve's words traps her in a cage.

The last two couplets provide insight for the poem as a whole with a dash of humor. Eve asks Adam to "forgo the house making out of dung. / She can't take the smell." Eve makes her point for the reason she inquires in the first place. She wants Adam to stop giving her what he thinks she desires. He works hard to build her a home, but does not listen to her requests. This forces her to go without his help and live in a house she doesn't like. His statement, "it is all he has," demonstrates that he's not listening. Eve isn't worried about what "he has." What he does have is enough.

Jun-Jun Sta Ana enhances Eve Asks with his cover art. Inside a cage of birds face various directions. Behind them, words cannot be read. The idea fits the book's theme perfectly.

Christine Redman-Waldeyer has published various works, is founder and editor of Adanna, is highly educated, and teaches writing and journalism. She spotlights the male-female condition, and then focuses on a common placement for women and how they feel because of it. Eve Asks fuels conversation and elicits passionate debates. If readers expect poetry with obvious understanding upon first reading, this is not the book for them because although the words and lines are simple, the topic is not. This poem challenges readers and seems to ask if anything can be done about the confusion that happens between men and women. Redman-Waldeyer builds a great spring-board for this topic in an artful way. It is absolutely impressive and anything but simple.

 

Archives

Hush by Nikki Ummel

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Erotic: New and Selected Poems

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

The Death of Sitting Bear by N. Scott Momaday

WHILE YOU WERE GONE BY SYBIL BAKER

MY STUNT DOUBLE BY TRAVIS DENTON

Made by Mary by Laura Catherine Brown

THE RAVENMASTER: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London

Children of the New World By Alexander Weinstein

Canons by Consensus by Joseph Csicsila

And Then by Donald Breckenridge

Dear Everyone by Matt Shears

Magic City Gospel by Ashley M. Jones

Intimacy by Stanley Crawford

Lunch Poems by Deborah Kuan

The Best American Poetry 2016

Crosstalk by Connie Willis

The King of White Collar Boxing by David Lawrence

They Were Coming for Him by Berta Vias-Mahou

Verse for the Averse: a Review of Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry

That Other Me by Maha Gargash

Simone by Eduardo Lalo

Swimming by Karl Luntt

Ghost/ Landscape by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher

Enchantment Lake by Margi Preus

Bad Light by Carlos Castán

Diaboliques by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

Staying Alive by Laura Sims

Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo

Fireflies by John Leland

Maze of Blood by Marly Youmans

Tender the Maker by Christina Hutchkins

Little Anodynes by Jon Pineda

Conjuror by Holly Sullivan McClure

Someone's Trying To Find You by Marc Augé

The Four Corners of Palermo by Giuseppe Di Piazza

Now You Have Many Legs to Stand On by Ashley-Elizabeth Best

The Knowledge by Robert Peake

The Darling by Lorraine M. López

How To Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes

Watershed Days: Adventures (A Little Thorny and Familiar) in the Home Range by Thorpe Moeckel

[INSERT] BOY by Danez Smith

Demigods on Speedway by Aurelie Sheehan

Find Me by Laura Van Den Berg

Singing Bones by Kate Schmitt

Knuckleball by Tom Pitts

Wandering Time by Luis Alberto Urrea

Teaching a Man to Unstick His Tail by Ralph Hamilton

Domenica Martinello: The Abject in the Interzones

Control Bird Alt Delete by Alexandria Peary

Twelve Clocks by Julie Sophia Paegle

Love You To a Pulp by C.S. DeWildt

Even Though I Don’t Miss You by Chelsea Martin

Women by Chloe Caldwell

Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

ESSAY 2:12 A.M. by Kat Meads

Revising The Storm by Geffrey Davis

Quality Snacks by Andy Mozina

Nature's Confession by J.L. Morin

Midnight in Siberia by David Greene

Strings Attached by Diane Decillis

Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging by Joshua Dolezal

The New Testament by Jericho Brown

You Don't Know Me by James Nolan

Phoning Home: Essays by Jacob M. Appel

Words We Might One Day Say by Holly Karapetkova

Murder by Danielle Collobert

Sorrow by Catherine Gammon

The Americans by David Roderick

Put Your Hands In by Chris Hosea

I Think I Am in Friends-Love With You by Yumi Sakugawa

Third Wife by Jiri Klobouk

Box of Blue Horses by Lisa Graley

Review of Hilary Plum’s They Dragged Them Through the Streets

The Sleep of Reason by Morri Creech

American Neolithic by Terence Hawkins

The Hush before the Animals Attack by Carol Matos

Regina Derieva, In Memoriam by Frederick Smock

Review of The House Began to Pitch by Kelly Whiddon

Hill William by Scott McClanahan

Seamus Heaney Aloft

The Bounteous World by Frederick Smock

Going Down by Chris Campanioni

Review of Empire in the Shade of a Grass Blade by Rob Cook

Review of The Day Judge Spencer Learned the Power of Metaphor

Review of The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish

Review of Life Cycle Poems by Dena Rash Guzman

Review of Saint X by Kirk Nesset

Review of The Tide King by Jen Michalski

Review of Jessica Treadway's Please Come Back to Me