Debra Warren has appropriately titled her book of poetry Pausing to Catch My Breath. The pages depict this mother and grandmother as someone who I would personally love to sit across from at a kitchen table with a huge pot of tea and talk for hours.
Her style implements simple vocabulary with an honest appeal, yet her work is astoundingly moving. This is the kind of poetry that I like to read at a slow pace in order to allow the statements to really sink in. I think is a good example of what I mean. Today challenges readers to see beyond the mundane, by considering what others are experiencing that very moment. Its Never Too Late was a moving piece about many kinds of incarceration. I related with Trapped, especially where she wrote, “I am trapped inside a body that betrays”. Pausing to Catch My Breath is a particularly beautifully written piece. I hope to retain in memory my favorite line of this poem, “Hearing the music, I dance to my yesterdays”. Debra also displays an appealing sense of humor in her work. I loved the imagery of viewing cruel and stupid people as “human speed bumps” along the road of life.
Pausing to Catch...