Special Feature

The special feature section highlights exceptional works or features that do not fit within Roadrunner's normal format.

For this issue's Special Feature I have reviewed muddy shoes candy heart by Sasa Vazic.

Peaks Press has developed a winning formula with their multimedia eBook.  Sasa Vazic’s muddy shoes candy heart beautifully implements this formula with photos and music from her native Serbia and Montenegro that are both haunting and captivating.  It is the poetry, however, that is the heart of this collection, the substance beneath the flavor.

                                                        winter morning
                                                        just boiled cornflour
                                                        with milk

There is an old world solitude, a sense of necessity that pervades this book.  There is a longing and belonging that harkens to a place older than memory but still somehow remembered.

                Along the summer path
                two old men talking
                step by step

                                                                                    Country graveyard.
                                                                                    Pushing away the tall weeds
                                                                                    searching for ancestors.

There is a sense of loneliness injected with brief but shining moments of joy as in the section entitled “Spring.”

                                                                                      A little sparrow
                                                                                      looking at itself in the puddle—
                                                                                      spring at last!

                A butterfly touched
                the newly-sprouted flower—
                and is already gone.

Under the section entitled “1999” Vazic has collected poems of war, which bring to our attention the travesty and pain of living in a war zone, without being political or wrought with despair.  In fact a feeling of hope is infused, so that by the sections conclusion we are left with hope.

                                                                Broken bridge.
                                                                Through clouds of smoke
                                                                birds fly.

Overall, this is a beautifully produced, moving collection reminiscent of Santoka in its sense of place, solitude, and longing.  The rich timbre and charming accent of Sasa’s voice round out the production, breathing life and personality into this collection.  It is a steal at $20 post paid and on Roadrunner’s recommended reading list.