I find it refreshing to read such work as Carrie Magness Radna’s in Hurricanes Never Apologize. Within this short book, a collection of thirty-one poems there’s beauty in its simplicity.
Following from the devastation of Hurricane Michael in 2018, Hurricanes Never Apologize serves as a fitting depiction of the damage caused, not only by natural events, but also the damage we inflict upon each other, the damage caused by political leaders and their ideologies, the damage caused by family members who speak before they think and the damage of losing a loved one. Like Hurricanes there’s never an apology, and sometimes no apology is needed but the aftermath of the damage and devastation is still something that we all wear like some ephemeral ‘badge of honour’.
There’s often so much written about poetry and poets, describing them as ‘raw’, ‘angry’ or ‘protesting’ but what I felt reading Hurricanes Never Apologize was warmth and understanding. Yes, there’s anger and there’s protesting but the poetry here is not angry poetry, it’s poetry that seeks every crevasse to understand the disillusionment of not only today’s America but also the world around us juxtaposed with the symbolic world of folklore, myth and legend.
There is indeed a frustration within the pages of Hurricane’s Never Apologize but this is a frustration to the unchangeable, those things we are powerless against, but we are still frustrated all the same. Hurricanes Never Apologize is a book many of us will identify with, a book that not only acknowledges our own lives but uses its own way to let the reader know they’re not on their own. My only sadness was it ended too soon.
- Hurricanes Never Apologize by Carrie Magness Radna is published by Luchador Press ($13.00). To order a copy go to www.barnesandnoble.com
Tom Stanger
Founder and Editor of Pilgrim House, currently undertaking a research degree at Bangor University and working on a book on Folklore and early Welsh Christianity. Tom’s other work on music, poetry, health along other writings and images can be found at tomasstanger.com
