Review by msager -- A Loaf Of Bread by Rana Bitar

[msager]

[Following is a volunteer review of "A Loaf Of Bread" by Rana Bitar.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Rana Bitar’s collection of poems titled “A Loaf of Bread” considers the sorrow and despair from moving, being in a war zone, and death. Each poem in the bunch surveys Bitar’s years during the civil war in Syria. She discusses topics from death in general, losing a father, becoming a soldier, and being buried. The poems all together are a requiem for the loss of Bitar’s homeland.

The poems build off of each other. The reader can almost imagine the poems becoming a story, depicting the life of a survivor and victim of war. Bitar uses repetition and parallelism to show the different parts of the character’s life. This is portrayed in the very beginning of “Bombed,” as the lines keep repeating the phrase “who will.” Bitar does this in a lot of her other poems, where she brings back phrases and re-iterates main points to the poetry.

The stanzas are lyrical and almost sing-songy. Lines like those describing sounds of house bells, dishes, and giggles truly come to life. Overall, the poetry is able to reach many senses because of this.

Bitar really brings the reader into her work, which is why I think this work deserves a three out of four stars. This being said, some of the stanza lost that sing-songiness I mentioned above and felt very abrupt to me, particularly at the end of some poems. Poems like “Where I Am From” switches so suddenly from “I am” statements to this one last stanza about something in the character’s cabinet. I understand that the sense is to say that Bitar, or the character in the poem, is the broken tea set set on display which will have to be repaired one day simply from memories. This being said, the sudden leap from comments about what the character is like to this well-thought out metaphor can be interpreted as hasty. And for this reason, I do not give “A Loaf of Bread” the full four out of four but instead a three. This however can be argued to be on purpose and to serve the point of making a big statement at the end.

I think the one poem that made me think the most was definitely “Life and Death.” This is the shortest poem in the bunch, only seven lines long, but Bitar is able to put so much meaning in so little space. This poem discusses the ideas of death and love and life. The three interconnect and yet are not in any sense the same. The last line really packed the punch and made me think for a while.

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A Loaf Of Bread
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