Rooted and Winged by Luanne Castle: Standing So Your Familiar Setting Takes Flight with You

The book cover is beautifully done.

Today I am joining Luanne Castle on her Book Tour around the blogs, and here is my reflective review of her latest, newly released poetry book, Rooted and Winged.

While the title is my own poetic way of describing the poetry book, Rooted and Winged, a favorite line of mine that I’d read in the book is “A question isn’t for answering, but for asking.” You may also ask yourself while reading the book, are the poems showing that it is in being rooted or grounded in our lives and environment, we may see more purpose, that these things may seem to gain wings and flight? Or is it that we should find ourselves more magical than ordinary, and glide through all of life this way?

The poems are composed with the details of everyday life in what feels to be places and recognizable landscapes Ms. Castle has lived, like the midwest, Michigan and the west coast Arizona, USA. Yet the book is strong in specific details and word choice, rather than broad terms, which makes it intricate and interesting to read, seamlessly so, with poetic techniques that come in very naturally and a rootedness in subtle 20th century poetry styles that give this book such ground, while also adding rhymes, spontaneity, and conversational or colloquial lyrical lines.

A favorite poem, “Noah and the Middle School Marching Band” hints at the writerly advice of not putting birds into your poem, as a kind of caution against cliche, and in the poem, that advice is not exactly followed, yet the poem unfolds wonderfully in an imagined marching band of birds, two by two, and very memorable. And from, “I Started to Write a Poem About Packing”: “…I’m imagining something splendid. My suitcase filled with magic cards and baklava.”

Rooted and Winged takes familiar facts or family members and turns them into a myth or folklore story-like poem in a way lets you know them or the situations truer than if Ms. Castle had just given facts. I highly recommend this book to poetry readers, especially those who enjoy traditional techniques and building on styles of modern poetry, attentiveness to word choice, while the poems also evoke the personality of a speaker who is down to earth and welcomes the reader in tone.

Jade