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Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite
India Blake’s Captured, like the sublime black and white photographs that accompany each of the inspired poems it contains, is an exercise in duality - here is no compromise; no middle ground. India Blake offers, in this series of verse portraits, an uncompromising look at hard choices and the pain of living with the consequences, punctuated by points of light and hope that are alternately disarming and comforting. Blake’s world is neither forgiving nor hopeful and yet, at the most unexpected moments, a single ray of light illuminates deftly our need to know that our pain is felt outside of ourselves - that our signals into the void are heard and understood.
Whether writing about doomed butterflies captured in a jar and slowly coming to the realization that the only freedom they have left is death (the image of the book’s title) or ‘promised spring’ in the wake of Nature’s perversity after a freak April snow, Blake dangles her profound images (both visual and poetic) between death and hope, thereby setting up the duality which drives this collection - the eternal life/death cycle that defines human existence: open to pain, striving for tranquility, in this environment of struggle/we learned to hold on to each other/as we sliced into our centers (Speculation).
In the end, while it is clear that India Blake wants her readers to be ever-mindful of the duality that governs us, it is also clear that she does not want us to be defeated by it. Happiness is always an option; however rarely it might be within reach. It can be no accident that she chooses to end Captured on a hopeful note: I feel thankful that there is a quietness/in me this afternoon/I recognize all the positives to being alive/They are not grand, but to me they are greatly significant.
Cling fast to hope, ye who enter here - India Blake’s Captured will deliver you to a place of light if you are willing to walk through the darkness.
