Title: Tangled Thoughts
Author: Emeline Rodway
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1-7960-4840-7
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 122
Reviewed by: Beth Adams

Read Book Review

Author Emeline Rodway begins her collection of poems in Tangled Thoughts with what might be called a disclaimer about her interpretation of what poetry is to her; not abiding by traditional foot or beat, nor rhyme – she embarked to scribe a reflective collection of her thoughts on many topics, which by nature do become tangled in the mind. Peppered with “I’s,” she uses her personal opinions and interpretations of how she views the world in a way in which readers will become familiar with who she is; her values, her likes and dislikes.

Without getting into her secret heart-felt zone of her loves, and without becoming a woe-is-me-poet by any sense, she portrays a wisdom with words hinging on philosophy as much as entertaining readers with her clever observations. For these reasons I found this collection to be very uplifting, intelligent and representing a mature, almost a retroactive analysis of reality in today’s culture. Midway into the book is her poem titled “My Stash” in which she writes about how someday her kids will empty her closet and find all sorts of yarns, wools, acrylics, angora, cashmere in all of the colors of the rainbow. “Enough to open a yearn store.” This poem, I believe was the root of the book’s title, as everyone knows someone who has a stash of things of interest to them more than to most others. Then she writes a series of poems about the seasons, bringing intuitive emotional observations into the best parts of each of the months. I found her humor in her poem “Black Friday” very profound as she talks about shoppers swarming like lemmings, with elbows sharpened under the cover of darkness, ending her poem with, “No stoppage to their scurrying until they reach the cliff over which they plunge into an abyss of debt.”

One other poem most worthy of particular mention was her designing of the American Flag. Rather than the colors of the Union Jack with Stars symbolizing our states, she calls “My Flag,” as excerpted from her poem, “I would sew a patchwork quilt of Navajo blanket scraps, smoky and torn, Inuit furs, soft and warm, chewed moccasin leather that crept in silence through pine and birch, squares of homespun flour sacks to divide warring tartans into pleats of submission and sweaty triangular head rags that our slaves soaked in tears of bondage and anger. I would trim Irish linen and Spanish lace and damask from chateaus of France with serapes, mantillas, saris, and obis in stripes alternating dirndls and lederhosen…” as she continued with such an original and lovely tribute to many of the cultures comprising the American society – symbolized by the fabrics and textures.

Tangled Thoughts is not a book to be missed, as these examples are just a few of the impressions readers will be exposed to by such an interesting, sensitive, and human author. As a gift to loved ones or to yourself, this book will resonate with readers’ thoughts as they try to detangle the world around us. Emeline Rodway has received what I would call an awareness pinnacle of matriarchal hindsight; a pseudonym for maternal wisdom.