Incandescent Visions by Lee Hudspeth
Source: the poet Hardcover, 68 pgs. I am an Amazon Affiliate
Incandescent Visions by Lee Hudspeth is a collection with big aspirations, exploring where creativity comes from and how it evolves. It also pays homage to several important people in his life. The collection is laid out in chapters, not sections, much like a memoir would be. One drawback for me was the prologues of each section and the explanation of the poems in the sections; those would have worked better at the end. I prefer to read and reread poems to sit with them, suss out meaning, absorb the feelings they generate.
From Mom
... Sometimes it's easier to step back and be right here On the sidewalk
From Stronger
... In the moment, it's not about the moment Ghostly priors, messy entanglements Hanging like links of a heavy chain There are moments in the collection where the reader will be beside the poet and looking at their own life and the past that haunts them. These poems aim to provide a look at how those pasts can shape us but also at how we have to let them go. There are strong moments in many of these poems, but if the aim is to explore creativity, the strongest poem in the collection is "Framework." Imagine a blank sheet of paper with a red dot: "I hold the framework in my hands/The framework embraces me in return/It is a portal to other lands/"
Incandescent Visions by Lee Hudspeth is a debut collection with big ambitions that fall a little short, but if the poet's explanations and prologues were kept out of the collection or to the end of the book, the poems could have stood on their own. Some poems need to be refined. Rhyming poems are generally not something I enjoy, but in this case, Hudspeth does an admirable job. If you're looking for a collection with heart, Hudspeth opens his to you.
RATING: Tercet
About the Poet:
Lee Hudspeth is an award-winning author and poet, musician, and fellow human being. Incandescent Visions is his first book of poetry. He is the co-author of ten nonfiction books in the field of Information Technology. He has written articles for professional journals like PC Computing and Office Computing. He is the author of over one hundred articles in the online magazine The Naked PC, which he co-founded and co-published. He lives in Southern California with his wife, two sons, and their cat. Find out more about Lee, his books, and his music at LeeHudspeth.com.