Title: Peace from Insanity
Author: Jesse M. Arzate
Publisher: Authors’ Tranquility Press
ISBN: 978-1958179734
Pages: 58
Genre: Poetry
Reviewed by: Lily Amanda
Pacific Book Review
Peace from Insanity is just as the title suggests, an introspective odyssey of warm vignettes that fleshes out the vibrancy and frailty of life as it dissects the emotional aftermath of human experiences such as: falling in love, heartbreak, compassion, parenthood, spirituality, racism, and humanity.
Each prose poem moves around concrete messages of empathy kindness, good accord, and personal development. They employ a variety of formats such as metrical patterns, and slant rhyming with most flowing as free verses. Still, remarkable enjambment is achieved through the continuation of sentences without a pause beyond the end of a stanza. Elsewhere, skillful rhyming is achieved through the repetition of words and phrases such as in the poem Peace where the author writes:
Peace in this world
it’s an unattainable dream.
Wait maybe 10 people can prove me wrong.
Maybe 10,000 people can prove me wrong.
Maybe 10 million people can prove to me
wrong or more.
Some of the entries demand to be read out loud to dig up the nuances present in them as others appear to be quiet and contemplative musings from the poet offering a captivating catharsis to the reader. To accentuate her points, Poet Arzate encompasses various images from the quietness and stillness of nature with some objects recurring often enough to accrue the weight of the symbol. For example, in Pillow of Dreams, the poet intones:
Daffodils and lemon drops
children dream and raindrops
nursery rhymes and lullabies
riddles and giggles
fantasies and daydreams
let’s keep that part of our
childhood alive as we grow old.
For without childish imagination
life is just a blank canvas
without colorful dreams.
Peace from Insanity is without a doubt a well-grounded embroidery from an accomplished poet. That the poems deliver sage wisdom in a gala of few words and sentences is a triumph in itself. Altogether, Jesse M. Arzate’s poetry folio exemplifies the musicality of language as it delivers much-needed advice to humanity today and is bound to tug at the heartstrings of every reader.
