Title: Reborn and Other Versifications
Author: A.E. Fonner
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781532035586
Pages: 94
Genre: Poetry
Reviewed by: Gabby Shacknai

Read Book Review

Poetry remains one of the few genres of literature that is consistently deferred to the classics—Shakespeare, Yeats, Whitman, and even Robert Frost—but rarely are 21st- century poets deemed worthy of discussion. Author and poet A.E. Fonner, however, makes a compelling case for this trend to be rebuffed in his latest poetry anthology, Reborn and Other Versifications.

Throughout his brief but rich collection of poetry, Fonner takes readers on a lyrical journey of personal growth in response to troubling loss and grief. Reborn and Other Versifications is inherently evolutionary, beginning with “Lost in the Dark,” which appears to reflect the poet’s lowest possible point and features verse which is entirely devoid of hope. The journey then progresses to “Through the Twilight,” a section whose poetry begins to see the light shining through the darkness he has found himself so immune to. Finally, we are taken through “Emerge in the Light,” which boasts optimistic poetry that embodies and explores the many joys of life.

In “Misery,” Fonner captures the utter hopelessness of depression and grief with lines like “In silence, the night passes / Slowly into day, / Marked only by the beating / Of a wounded heart.” As the collection becomes more and more aware of the goodness that remains past the darkness, though, the poet brings God into his verse, attributing the hope he now feels to religion. In “From Darkness (Rise New),” for instance, Fonner writes, “Blackness recedes; the void’s made full once more. / Out of His grace, life is wrought from ash bleak.”

While Fonner’s collection offers a deeply personal account of the poet’s passage from misery to happiness, the various poems it contains go far beyond his own experiences and become wholly adaptable and therefore relatable to their readers. Whether adhering to traditional rhyme and meter or exploring unchartered terrain, Fonner’s poetry does not get caught up in the aesthetics and instead does what the genre does best: it makes known to readers that regardless of how alone they may feel, they are never truly the only ones experiencing the pain, grief, questioning, or joy that comes with life.

Reborn and Other Versifications is the ideal read for anyone who has ever doubted the goodness of the world or who has felt adrift in his or her own life. While Fonner’s anthology is deeply religious at times, it will remind readers that, with religion or not, we all experience sadness and grief but there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, a sentiment every human could do with being reminding of in today’s world.