What is the Real Story? by BARBARA FLUG COLIN

“What is the Real Story?” is a poetic biographic/memoir and begins where one apocryphal story of family history is told. Here the author begins the infusion of Matisse’s paintings and quotes with expository text that is brilliantly applied in the rest of the work.

Personalities of characters are developed with one simple word, observation or interchange that gives them immutability in the unfolding. Then the work of memory begins, more with glimpses, fragments of past encounters embellished with unconscious associations, stimulated by feeling, sound, and especially Colin’s gorgeous renditions of Matisse’s paintings spilling over into a moment of reality. Paintings with no verbal language that through Colin’s descriptions invents a personal linguistic that colors memory and perception of reality. Following Matisse’s statements and paintings throughout the poem, is a grounding in authenticity.

Colin’s unique approach to poetic form including rhyme, rhythm, time, space, and silence with moves from traditional to experimental, challenges and engages the reader. Where is the trauma? Only memories, non-verbal cues from sound and seeing (sea) Proustian smells, are dismantled, and brought closer to the truth. This gorgeous, captivating work pulls you in it and it will remain in you.

–Dee Shapiro is a three time Yaddo Fellow, recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation grant. Her paintings are in the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum, LAMOCA and other museums.

Baba…I love it…So interesting…Layers of an onion…The way its structured. Fascinating…Part poem…part prose…part screen play…Exists in reality…Gets into a poetic place…Nobody else tells stories that way…Connections create more meaning and symbolism. Poetry mixed with vignettes of stories…Small moments, storied…link…I like how you bring certain people in. Your parents have their names…But siblings are characters…Not just what is…but whose story.

It’s your writing. So much captures your voice. You’re telling your story…in the most baba way possible. You’re a story teller. And a poet…Memories linked together through poetry and perspective…Why it’s so interesting…patterns throughout create a structure around it…A line that connects everything…Effortless and flows…

–Simon Usdan