Our Second, and 3rd, Small Potato

Hello All,

I hope everyone is having a fine day. Today I present to you another Small Potato, Michael Paul Ladanyi, and his collection "Humming Riddles in Naked Seasons".


Review of Michael Paul Ladanyi’s Humming Riddles in Naked Seasons from Sun Rising Poetry Press.

With the opening quote, “I stare at the yellow sky, thinking that all / the true artist have died or / now refuse to paint.”, the reader accepts a sense of loss on many different levels. Yet, this third book by Ladanyi is not about an artist being lost or forgotten, but about the loss of us. Ladanyi grabs hold of everything dark in our world. He tells us of truths, of lies, of death, of the choices that form “the marrow” of our lives.

In his poem “Mouthing Promises” Ladanyi tells us, “This old house is creaking against loss, / refining itself further, as a matter / of obligation to the past, these cracks, / and bits of carpet, chipped plaster, / they seep a million passionate words.” We must peer past literal words and be taken in by the comparison to our lives. Each day is filled with bits of tattered carpet, chipped plaster, and cracks. Without these we would not experience the “seep” of “a million passionate words.” in the future. Ladanyi gives us that passion of the past, brings it into the present, and then embraces it all. His arms tightly wrapped around past “ghosts” of his wife, father, brother, and others around him prove that there may be reason behind uncontrollable events. But if these events are buried, forgotten, then answers, calm, and fulfillment may never be achieved.

Ladanyi nearly demands us to look into the past to find out where we are today. In his poem “Not Yet Written” he again gives us a purpose of our past and why we must look upon it with new eyes day to day, be enchanted that we lived on and now have that ability to let our “bare feet” attempt “to negotiate the new snow in numbing, sucking gasps.”

Ladanyi stands naked before us. We see the death, rape, incest of our lives, but we are also revealed the life, hue, want, and the grace to continue filling blank pages with history. Whether that history be joyful or tearful we must live it and not let life be “like death unhinged, silently gathering / small treasures to bury in pale / places we would never think to look.”


I wanted to add a link here to Joe LaCorte's work, which was included in a past issue of VLQ. There also is a review/essay of the work by yours truely. Please do visit the link and leave some comments for the artist. (This can be done by going to the bottom of the page and clicking the link there.)

I hope you enjoyed the reviews and come back again for more reviews and interviews with all our Small Potatoes. Don't forget to leave comments or ask questions if you wish.

Thank you,

SP