PEOPLE ARE PUZZLES--Poetry and Art by ALASTOR GEORGE
- Details
- Category: News
- Published: Thursday, 01 May 2025 16:32
- Written by Super User
- Hits: 7826
Having just turned 19, Alastor George was still in high school when Golden Antelope published People Are Puzzles in 2025. Now in college in North Carolina, and headed toward a career in medicine, Al grew up in five different states. He’s written fan fiction, danced, performed in musicals, participated in political protests, and come out. He’s read widely, dabbled in languages, and been inducted into two honors fraternities. People Are Puzzles consists of favorite poems written mostly when he was 15 or 16.
In these 44 poems, 15 pictures, and 3 essays, Al George shows readers just how puzzling life can be for a gifted American teen. The collection opens with a good-humored piece about making poetry while trying to please corporate publishers and reach unknown readers. What follows are works aimed at readers of all ages who need to know that their symbol systems are readable and adaptable, and that their conflicts and confusions are shared. Thus, many poems shape symbols for internal conflicts. In “Dog Teeth,” it’s the urge of someone who’d been hurt to “snap my teeth at you.” In “Rough Waves,” it’s the recognition that a tempest-tossed rowboat can feel more comfortable than an oil rig rusting in deep silence. While most of the symbols deployed belong to the natural world—flora, fauna, fire—a few invoke specific “Gen Z” moments requiring a *note for older readers.
George’s work grows organically, in sparking spirals and fragmented half-cycles around sturdy core questions: why do we humans do the often painful, sometimes destructive or even self-destructive things we do? What exactly is suffering? beauty? peace? Answers are often missing, or paradoxical, though there is a gradual movement towards understanding and acceptance. (See “Anger Born of Worry” and “Dandelions.”) The longest poem, “Foxglove,” traces a relationship through years of betrayals, manipulations, calls for help, moments of sweetness; it cites nine different kinds of beautiful, sweet, flowering plants, all toxic. Yet owning the confusion and beauty and pain, articulating those feelings for others, seems to strengthen both poet and reader. (See “Respite,” “Glass,” “Don My Armour.” ) A broad, historical perspective fuels pieces like “Western Roads: Colorado,” and People Are Puzzles concludes with a half-humorous meditation on the future.
In the words of The Midwest Book Review's reviewer People Are Puzzles is a compendium of original and thought-provoking verse -- and a bit iconoclastic here and there. Entertaining, fascinating, and impressive for a teenage poet (who must have something like an Old Soul), People Are Puzzles is an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists, as well as professional, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Poetry collections.