Charms Against Lightning
Linette Tang
"Charms against lightning" is a collection of poetry by James Arthur. Arthur explains the basis behind his style of writing poetry by stating, “That feeling of becoming a new person in a different place, even if it's an illusion, is intoxicating to me, and always has been.” Arthur’s debut production consists of lush and concise imagery that embodies the wonder of the awakening to unfamiliar and intimate discoveries of a spectrum of topics. They include deaths, from a distance or of those near to us. A sense of history, politics, and place is an integrated and integral part of the whole, yet Arthur paints with style, to welcome his readers into a world of Romantic enigmas and intrigues our doubts.
The poems in this book, includes a range of poems that are slightly irrational in its descriptions of objects and situations but when understood, takes a stand and perspective of things we never really thought about. The poem “Charms Against Lightning” for instance, draws connections between objects that seems connected but doesn’t. It compartmentalizes a natural disaster or a cause for disaster and put it against the actual problem, such as meningitis, lupus, earthquakes and even absurd details such as baldness. However, whether Arthur’s selections of these comparisons are arbitrary or not, we do not know.
Unlike Nature’s Chorus, a book review you will find on the next page, the poems in this book are more free-versed and will surprise you with the experiences James Arthur wishes to send to his reader about travelling and awakening your mind to a world of wonder. This book will take you around the world into the minds of the unexpected and the intricate aesthetics of the world we live in.
Poet James Arthur Brings Illusions into Poetry