New Book Review! Poet Drew Weinbrenner reviews "ALL STORMS PASS 2"!

 

We're excited to share this brilliant, thoughtfully literate analysis of ALL STORMS PASS 2 by author/poet/screenwriter William Drew Weinbrenner:

Inspiring! In the amorphous space between poetry, self-help, aphorism, personal development and mantra lies Luke Benoit’s new masterpiece: ALL STORMS PASS, THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS 2 [Rain and Fire].

Because more than one thing is going on in this work, ALL STORMS PASS cannot be relegated to the Personal Development shelf of Oprah’s Book Club. It is a brutally personal and specific literary work that documents the battles our collective egos fight daily.

Is it poetry? A life-coaching workbook? Affirmations for those in tough times? A memoir proudly cataloguing hard-won wisdom? The artist’s numerous motives rise from his experience as an educator, counselor, and coach. The reader can feel the visceral practicality of truisms like:

 

If you keep      

doing what 

you’re doing, 

you’re gonna   

keep getting 

what you’re 

getting.

 

ALL STORMS PASS is not new age, feel-good, escapism. The book is relentlessly pragmatic and unpretentious, boiling down the inner voices of a wide array of personal narratives that prompt the reader to recognize themselves in each profile.

 

Most personal development books originate from a philosophy or belief system. Without fail, the first step in enlightenment is an obligatory consensus on those values. The premise being that if we can’t agree on what enlightened detachment is, the reader has little hope of finding their way to it on their own from wherever they are.

 

ALL STORMS PASS takes the markedly different approach: you do NOT need to be a different person, in different circumstances, with a clear vision of nirvana. It gives you permission to be exactly the hot mess you are, owning the circumstances in which you find yourself, and saying right here, right now, just as I am and you are, some semblance of inner peace in available to us - if we’d just have the self-esteem to take it. The meditations do not aspire to perfectionism, and instead embrace what’s real and actual in each scenario.

 

Unlike the work of artist Barbara Kruger, whose charged slogans are steeped with ironic social commentary in the form of 20th century marketing campaigns, Benoit’s words externalize and objectify the most intimate and corrosive declarations we say to OURSELVES, and then respond - with pragmatic love and humor.

 

Text layout, in an E.E. Cummings freeform typography, requires the reader to digest each word or phrase in sequence. The text deliberately slows down the desperate eye, and the manic mind, to demand consideration of each idea. Benoit bravely holds up these confessions until the reader sees their own motives, impulses, self-indulgence, mania, self-sabotage and sublimation in self-context.

 

The reader cannot be ambivalent about the profiles. Immediately, the ear assesses the self in relation to each scenario, triggering judgement, nostalgia, regret, sympathy, titillation, and a detached reflection on all we’ve survived.

 

In the end ALL STORMS PASS is for anyone who ever needed to manifest the inner voice crazy-making in their head. It seems infinitely easier to be objective when it is fixed on the printed page, and captured tangibly in the hand. In some mystic and strange way, ALL STORMS PASS raises our stream of consciousness to the level of art. Wonderful. 

 

About this Reviewer:

 

William Drew Weinbrenner was named "One of Florida’s most promising contemporary writers" by Orange Slice Journal. His book, East of Pouring: Collected Poems 1980-2009 won the Florida Publishers Association 2009 President’s Book Award for Poetry.      

 

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS 2 - FIRE AND RAIN

Congrats, Author/Life Coach Luke Benoit for garnering this awesome Midwest Book Review! 

If anyone ever told you that you were anything less than wonderful—they lied. 

                         —ALL STORMS PASS: RAIN AND FIRE 

 

Life Coach Luke Benoit has followed up his book, ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS with a second book in the series: RAIN AND FIRE. Warning: This is not a book for the faint of heart in need of recovery from trauma. It’s a two-fisted, take-no-prisoners approach to coping with mental, emotional, and psychosomatic traumatic challenges.

This book offers ways to soothe the suffering and liberate them, if they are willing to face their demons.

As with the first book, Benoit presents verses he calls “anti-meditations” (which are the same as meditations, only different). RAIN AND FIRE continues to riff on therapeutic themes of recovery, addiction, self-help, and personal spirituality. A former psychotherapist with extensive 12-Step Recovery knowhow, Benoit proposes that these anti-meditations may occasionally serve as puzzles—jumping off places for discussion, self-assessment, or prayer.

As a philosopher and poet, Benoit strikes a balance between his own truths and universal truths. Yes, he went through the Valley of the Shadow, but he points out that his experiences are not unique. The question ultimately is not necessarily how can we avoid trauma, but how can we flourish in spite of it?

RAIN AND FIRE’S hybrid of searing poetry, confessional naked rage and heartfelt love is tempered with popup humor that keeps the reader smiling through tears while turning pages. Instead of titles, the meditations have subject-oriented headlines such as:

“When will it be success and how will I know it when it gets here?”

“Today, I will admit that sometimes BEING STUCK IS A CHOICE”

“Today, I will accept that LIFE is not an ALFRED HITCHCOCK MOVIE”

“There comes a time when no matter where you've been and no matter what you've been through, you have to MOVE FORWARD anyway”

And my personal favorite:

I will WALK MY DOG -
no matter what else is
going on.

Even Benoit’s Dedication starts out with a smile:

For my Auntie Cia,
my Mom and Dad
and the Tall Dark Stranger
I thought might bury me
in the basement.

In a poignant, highly personal passage, the author reveals that after writing the first book, he suffered a physical and mental breakdown that was eventually diagnosed as severe vertigo—a health crisis that ended his progress for a time, except in the arena of healing, which eventually did happen. 

Benoit does not attempt to offer readers magical solutions received from On High, but supplies aid as a fellow traveler who has come many times to a crossroads that asks him to choose between Light and Darkness, and he continues to choose Light.

I highly recommend this book to advocates of 12-Step Recovery and those who wish to learn more about it; seekers of recovery from trauma or life itself; spiritual seekers; and poetry lovers.

Title: ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS 2 – RAIN AND FIRE
Author: Luke Benoit
Publisher: Luke Benoit
Publication Date: May 27, 2021
Language: English
Paperback: 346 pages $17.95
978-0692222119
Available on Amazon

SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF A FIRE WALKER POET

Title: Inspirational Verse for Those Who Hunger and Thirst
Subtitle: A Book of Poems to Feed the Soul
Author: Artemis Craig

Genre: Inspirational and Religious Poetry

(Sale Sheet Info Below)

Reviewer: Marlan Warren

I have respect for anyone’s spiritual journey. And I have a lot of respect for the poet Artemis Craig, whom I met at USC, while we were both in film school studying screenwriting. We only met once, in the changing room of the gym, but her feisty humor made a lasting impression.

“Before they’re done, this school’s gonna own the drawers on my butt!” she said. I don’t know about her, but that school does own the drawers on my butt. The one thing I do know that we share is post-film-school depression. A not uncommon affliction in L.A.

Now, a couple decades later, Craig has risen out of the ashes of Hollywood as an evangelical poet who has walked through fire, and lived to tell her story in the form of Inspirational Verse for Those Who Hunger and Thirst: A Book of Poems to Feed the Soul.

With straightforward honesty and a gift for storytelling, Craig has arranged the poems in this anthology as an odyssey washed in the blood of heartaches, losses, and disappointments after returning home as the Prodigal Daughter. All the elements that make  “inspirational verse” inspirational are there (finding and praising the Grace of God), woven into searing moments from Craig’s life, told with her flair for dramatic prose and metaphor.

Her post-graduation first experience--pitching to execs at a major studio--soured her forever on staying on that track. Many film school alumni can relate (this one does). A sensitive soul, Craig stayed away from the written word until she began writing poetry in the 21^st Century, finally gaining the spiritual strength to openly share it in 2013 with this book.

The poem that opens the book, “Speak Now,” reflects the pain felt by many a disillusioned film student:

Without words I became invisible which was fine by me,

Found a home for my anger and bitterness in my invisibility.

Disappointment and hatred festered inside all the while,

But none knew because through it all I wore a smile.

I felt personal resonance with her personal poems about loss. One deeply regrets missing the passing of her grandmother because Craig was busy pursuing her career on the other coast. I was at USC editing my film for class when news of my father’s sudden passing came.

One of the most moving poems is “Life Not Mine to Save,” remembering her futile attempts to save her father’s life when he died of heart failure:

One, one thousand, two, one thousand

Chest compressions like I’d been taught weren’t enough

Formed a seal over your mouth and into it blew a quick puff.

Stay with me! Stay with me! But you refused to wake

Afterward she fills such bitterness, that she questions God’s actions:

Though it’s hard to believe, your life was not mine to save.

Anger at God is all I can feel,

That along with the hope that somehow

This can’t possibly be real.

The poem plays out like a short film. With a “resolution” that is accepting and spiritual:

Away from me, Daddy, your body lies in the cold grave

It seems like only yesterday, try as I might,

Your life was never mine to save.

But mine to cherish in moments of panic and doubt,

To keep as memories when I feel trapped and can’t get out.

I had an elderly aunt who would tell the story of her life and end it with “I didn’t know they’d throw the book at me!” Here, Artemis Craig, has thrown a book out of her life for others to gain some solace as they grapple with their own journeys.

As Charles Bukowski once said: “What matters most is how well you walk through fire.”

About the Author

Artemis Craig was born in a rural town in Birmingham, Alabama to a steelworker father and educator mother. She graduated with a BFA in Cinema and Television from the University of Southern California. She is the mother of one son, Roderic, who is her inspiration. Her hobbies include writing poetry in the Gifts of a Wordsmith group at her local library, as well as, performing at the On Stage at the Carver Theater open mike showcase. Currently, Artemis is finishing her second poetry book, Southern Fried Comfort Food: Recipes to Encourage the Soul, as well as her first novel, a sci-fi murder mystery, A Little Taste of Death. She divides her time between Birmingham, Alabama and Newport News, Virginia.

Author Website: https://artemiscraigpublishing.com/

SALE SHEET INFO

Title: Inspirational Verse for Those Who Hunger and Thirst
Subtitle:  A Book of Poems to Feed the Soul

Author: Artemis Craig

Publisher: Artemis Craig Publishing (Nov. 6, 2013

Paperback: $15.00   Pages: 64

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Inspirational-Verse-Those-Hunger-Thirst/dp/0989087603

ISBN-13: 978-0989087605

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Inspirational-Verse-Those-Hunger-Thirst-ebook/dp/B00HLXV864/

ASIN: B00HLXV864

Genre: Inspirational and Religious Poetry

#ChristianPoetry
#FaithBasedPoet
#Recovery
#SpiritualOdyssey
#Evangelical
#Poetry 
#ArtistSurvival

How to Love a Writer

Advice to the Lovelorn

If you value your privacy

 Do not date a writer.

If you have secrets

 Do not date a writer.

If you want to sneak around

 Do not date a writer.

If you want to lie your head off

 Do not date a writer.

If you want to see & not be seen

 Do not date a writer.

If you want calm and peace of mind

 Do not date a writer.

If you do not want to see yourself in Public

 Do not date a writer.

If you want to be cherished beyond all else

 Date a writer.

If you want to find new depths in intimacy

 Date a writer.

If you like the unexpected

 Date a writer.

If you accept your warts and all

 Date a writer.

If you do not care what she does as long as she’s with you

 Date a writer.

Advice to the Lovelorn, Warren, Marlan. November 5, 2016 

When Life gives you Lemons, make #poetry!