Apologies for a severe lack in one aspect of this review, which is due to formatting issues that made it impossible to tell where actual line breaks were meant to be (the lines varied depending on if I was reading it on my Kindle or my iPad, meaning I had no idea which was correct).

Sheffield’ poems have a clarity to them in tone and language, a clear-minded sense of places in the world readers can all relate to. Often, as well, they involve a speaker who moves in the world — physically, emotionally, but most of all attentively. A speaker who empathizes with those who move through the world with him, whether his own flesh and blood in the form of his two daughters, strangers with whom he shares the bond of humanity if not family, and empathy as well for the non-human: animals, insects, plants and trees.

In “A True Account of Wood-Getting from up the Chumstick”, he tells of how his friend suffers a stitches-requiring injury while they’re climbing up a slope, and the language seems disarmingly conversational, making it easy to miss the poet’s craft, his attention to sound, for instance in the lines (again, I’m guessing at breaks here):
The rest of that day the bandage stuck
Through heave and sweat
And we kept at it for two cords of heft and swing
And grapple and heap


Note the pairing of words, mirroring the pairing of men, the back and forth as they work, the rhyme of “sweat” and “kept”, the near rhyme of “kept” and “heft”, the alliteration of “kept” and “cords” or “heave”, “heft” and “heap.”

In one of my favorited, “Hitch,” a fisherman spots a “white slab of a day moth stuck upside down . . . crookedly struggling” and after several attempts manages to rescue it and “peering into/the pinpricked black/of its globed eyes.” Eyes that seem to peer through time and “see you multitudinously/the you who has killed and eaten . . ./the you who has hurt others/and born grudges/and the you who will again.” A lot of poets, I think, would have ended the piece there, the focus on the speaker, that look ahead in time, a promise or judgment. But Sheffield, concerned as much as he is with the natural world, return to the moth, which the speak places on a tree
Where it crawls
Wing-shivered into one the many furrows
Puzzling its way up
Past how many flakes
and branches breaking
how many rays of light
and how many needles . . .
to where a wisp of cloud in the whole blue sky floats

And it’s all connected, the water to the sky, the man to the moth, the moth to the tree, the tree—the “tallest pine” to the clouds. The world entire in a moment of grace.

Sharp-eyed details, a fullness of awareness, an abundance of empathy, and clear attention to craft in sound and rhythm make Not for Luck an easy recommendation

Derek Sheffield writes brutally and beautifully, with attention to detail and seamless memories. Not For Luck is a collection to carry with you for some time.

Name: Not For Luck
Author: Derek Sheffield
Genre: Poetry, Love
Rating: 3.1/5
Review:
Not for Luch by Derek Sheffield is a unique and exquisite collection of poetry and prose which predominantly talks about nature. The poems in this collection are vivid, descriptive, and very expressive. I loved how the poet used imagery in his poems. With Sheffield’s rapt attention, luminous imagery, and attuned ear, these poems enchant us into intimacy with ordinary moments that are rendered extraordinary.
I am giving this 3 out of 5 because of the problem I had with the format of this book, which made it quite troublesome to read.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. It was quite a bit longer than I like for poetry and I did not like that the format was messed up in the ARC, but I will not hold that against the book. I especially enjoyed it because most poetry is about love and loss where this one had a lot about nature.