We Give Birth to Light: Poems by Benjamin D. Carson

Benjamin Carson’s debut collection confronts mortality and love lost with the balm of reflection. Even when sundogs transform into “linear tombs of light” (“Halos”), the wisdom he’s gathered from a variety of lineages—ancestral and poetic—asks us to slow down and contemplate our common humanity. We Give Birth to Light is bound by light in all its celestial permutations: the sun, stars, moon, as well as the relational light of constellations and the moving light of falling stars. Carson even imbues kerosene and whiskey with the power of potential light—fire—and plumbs its opposite, the absence of light. The power of each poem pools until their collective light cracks us open and we must consider, indeed, what we give birth to.

–Christine Stewart-Nuñez, South Dakota Poet Laureate and author of Untrussed and Bluewords Greening

In Ben Carson’s gorgeous and moving new chapbook, a fishing rod seen in the last hours of the day “becomes a single thirsty limb,” its line, “a silver tongue” that disappears. And here, in a place of death and stars, a mother says, “We give birth to light . . . so that / darkness too can have its day.”  Please read this work.  It promises both suffering and solace. Bravo!

–Hilda Raz, author of LIST & STORY

Ben Carson’s poetry teaches us that what light we have, the light we give birth to, arises out of the losses, suffering, and pain that inevitably come with being alive in this world. Our mortal selves, loves, desires, and days all burn brightly and briefly across an existential night sky, then disappear into the darkness they came from. With unflinching, almost Zen-like clarity of image and syntax, Carson’s poetry brings us as close as we hope, or dare get, to the flame of what is real.

 –Fred Marchant, author of Said Not Said

Benjamin Carson’s poems in We Give Birth to Light are filled with memorable and detailed images: haunting (“Black Hole Moon”); serious injury (“The Numbing Drift”); indiscretions of youth (“What It Cost Us”); and poems of place and humor. He makes excellent use of heritage in family stories, and captures the elusive nature of relationships (“Beach Stones”). Ultimately, his love poems remind us of loss (“For a Time”), and lead us to the last line of the title poem: “We give birth light . . . so that / darkness too can have its day.”

–Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet 2013-2018, author of Rock • Tree • Bird