Roger Powell. Dandelions Aren't Weeds: Poems on Masculinity, Identity, and Life. Power Within Her Publishing, 2024. Reviewed by Wesley Scott McMasters, Feb. 6, 2024.
Poems do many things. Good poems, to me, highlight beauty, pain, and complexity. They are genuine and authentic. They make me think more about who I am and the world around me. The best may make me cry, and what I wish they would do more often is give a sense of hope. The poems in Dandelions Aren’t Weeds check these boxes for me, and they not only offer a sense of hope, but in fact, these poems demand it. The poems throughout this new collection by Roger Powell echo with the message that comes at the end of Powell’s introduction to the work: “…you are enough.” With careful and deft language, Powell reminds the reader of this message every step of the way while asking questions that challenge us to acknowledge the depths and unending potential of our emotions: “what else can I love?” The speaker throughout these poems talks to the poet and to the audience in the spirit of clear and illustrative example. Rooted in nostalgia and memory, Powell challenges us to consider what we hear, see, and remember – these poems, Powell explains in his introduction, once took form and unity under the theme of Conversations. This is not entirely lost in this new iteration of reflections on life and masculinity – since the speaker invites frank discussion about what it means to be a man, in a way that only a football-player-turned-poet can. An important memory for me as a poet includes my father realizing, and saying, at an open mic poetry night that “poetry can be a manly thing, too.” Masculinity is complicated, and men are often encouraged to keep this to themselves along with any questions or reservations they may have about these societal expectations. In this collection, Roger Powell says the thing out loud and asks the questions that some men feel they can’t ask. In doing so, Powell’s poems offer hope, community, and encouragement to those who might be trying to understand who they are.
The poems in Dandelions Aren’t Weeds are “tough” and “beautiful” in traditional and nontraditional ways. These poems fulfill the image of the dandelion, sometimes literally with concrete imagery, that resonates through the wind and these pages, reminding us, like Powell, that who we choose to be is okay. In a long poem about several occasions “At the Dealership,” the speaker recalls to a conversation with a truck salesman at one of a few dealerships: “With a simple click of the tongue / he’s exposed the wound.” Metaphors like these abound and expose wounds of the reader’s own, but this time to urge healing.
Poems like “My Father’s Hands” explore family and traditional male relationships and frame the rest of these conversations-turned-something-more, giving the questions that resound throughout the collection a solid resting point. In “Together,” the question “why are men so scared of this” calls for a community which this book aims to offer, one of nurturing and supportive friendships and relationships that are often masked by societal hypermasculine expectations and media.
These poems urge for a radical sense of self-acceptance and a reframing of masculinity that is timely, engaging, beautiful, and very much welcome in 2024.
Poems do many things. Good poems, to me, highlight beauty, pain, and complexity. They are genuine and authentic. They make me think more about who I am and the world around me. The best may make me cry, and what I wish they would do more often is give a sense of hope. The poems in Dandelions Aren’t Weeds check these boxes for me, and they not only offer a sense of hope, but in fact, these poems demand it. The poems throughout this new collection by Roger Powell echo with the message that comes at the end of Powell’s introduction to the work: “…you are enough.” With careful and deft language, Powell reminds the reader of this message every step of the way while asking questions that challenge us to acknowledge the depths and unending potential of our emotions: “what else can I love?” The speaker throughout these poems talks to the poet and to the audience in the spirit of clear and illustrative example. Rooted in nostalgia and memory, Powell challenges us to consider what we hear, see, and remember – these poems, Powell explains in his introduction, once took form and unity under the theme of Conversations. This is not entirely lost in this new iteration of reflections on life and masculinity – since the speaker invites frank discussion about what it means to be a man, in a way that only a football-player-turned-poet can. An important memory for me as a poet includes my father realizing, and saying, at an open mic poetry night that “poetry can be a manly thing, too.” Masculinity is complicated, and men are often encouraged to keep this to themselves along with any questions or reservations they may have about these societal expectations. In this collection, Roger Powell says the thing out loud and asks the questions that some men feel they can’t ask. In doing so, Powell’s poems offer hope, community, and encouragement to those who might be trying to understand who they are.
The poems in Dandelions Aren’t Weeds are “tough” and “beautiful” in traditional and nontraditional ways. These poems fulfill the image of the dandelion, sometimes literally with concrete imagery, that resonates through the wind and these pages, reminding us, like Powell, that who we choose to be is okay. In a long poem about several occasions “At the Dealership,” the speaker recalls to a conversation with a truck salesman at one of a few dealerships: “With a simple click of the tongue / he’s exposed the wound.” Metaphors like these abound and expose wounds of the reader’s own, but this time to urge healing.
Poems like “My Father’s Hands” explore family and traditional male relationships and frame the rest of these conversations-turned-something-more, giving the questions that resound throughout the collection a solid resting point. In “Together,” the question “why are men so scared of this” calls for a community which this book aims to offer, one of nurturing and supportive friendships and relationships that are often masked by societal hypermasculine expectations and media.
These poems urge for a radical sense of self-acceptance and a reframing of masculinity that is timely, engaging, beautiful, and very much welcome in 2024.