Charles Freeland

Eros & (Fill in the Blank) Charles Freeland

Poetry. Charles Freeland dances under moonlight. The landscape for his delightfully curious insights is visual, symbolic, a work of art and an advanced warning dusted with allusion, playfulness and literary confidence. A poem in prose, an epistolary project, EROS unspools advice wise, subversive and funny; very funny. Sentences tumble, one after the other. Truth rides shotgun to contradiction. I suspect James Joyce has placed an advanced order for this book-length paragraph of lilting depth and joy, as well as Charles Bernstein, Charles Simic, Lee Ann Brown, Frank O'Hara and assorted scholastics and philosophers. Freeland is Polonius on acid. Unlike Polonius, the author is advantaged by having read the tragedy's fifth act while simultaneously knowing pleasures of sensation and the 'fact of the human body. Its shape like the modest ginger root.' As only passionate careful writers can do, Freeland offers his readers--you and you and you--his brimming heart on his well-tailored sleeve. On our 'advanced planet' Psyche is in danger, EROS cautions--though worth much regard. How bright Freeland's moon--Sarah Sarai.