Review of What the World Sees

by Jennifer Campbell 

Reading straight through Perry S. Nicholas’ What the World Sees is a bit like sipping a foreign aperitif; its sensory details entice, it pains you a little to reach the end, and it leaves you changed—ardent and pensive.  The book’s central conceit is that what a writer presents to the world is not the complete truth.  Once a poem is released into the world, it is subject to the whims and conjectures of the audience.  Reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’ parable “Borges and I,” at times it is difficult to divide the man’s truth from the truth of the poet’s expression.  And like Borges, Nicholas the man is a shadow-self that cannot be fully separated from the work.  “I thought I had found something; I’ll let you free. / Then I will be what the world sees.”  Several pieces such as “I’m Gone,” “Feature,” and “Dear Brain” address this separation, but ultimately, Borges’ claim: “I do not know which of us has written this page” matters not.  Even while the poems display this internal tension, always seeking answers, they leave the reader with pride in the mystery; Nicholas claims, after all, it is “my myth revisited.”

The poems can be read in blocks of themes: the Greek-American experience, brief snapshots of moments and individuals, intimate relationships, and the realities of aging.  Nicholas’ first book The River of You explored the conflicting influences of a bilingual household and the new collection picks up that thread, yet it is also bound by a greater sense of urgency and intensity.  Then again, the ideas have been cooking for a few decades, as noted in “Twenty-five Year Sabbatical,” and he’s been “up all night to explain it away.”  There is a noticeable path of growth and self-knowledge throughout the pages, yet the pieces certainly work in isolation and reveal gems like “Greeks Have a Word for It,” “My Father Never Had Time,” and “Revisiting the Wooden Bridge (We Crossed Over),” which again connects the poet-person in the admission: “All I’ve been able to salvage this year / are a few driftwood phrases.”

Another of the book’s highlights is a five-part piece titled “Exhibition.”  Far beyond Ekphrastic poetry that simply applauds the beauty within the artwork, the paintings noted in the subtitles serve as portals to a speaker’s somewhat wounded psyche, but they never revert to sentimentality or doubt.  These are confident pieces that sometimes leave the reader disconcerted: “Man, how tight it feels, / my heart that is, pooling / on the lush blue carpet” and

The sky injected

by lavender blood

and only the lonely,

cherry heart.

Nicholas’ work addresses some common topics from every possible angle, trying to find space for reconciliation—private and public—in family and loss.  He speaks of his father as a “target for the disconnected,” his mother as one who “never / once offered her boys a steady ride,” yet there’s a sense of resignation implicit in the lines.  That’s not to say the book is humorless; the poems take everything seriously, even their private jokes about lefties and Bob Dylan:

I’m off Dylan again.

A relationship spanning

four decades, but of course

he doesn’t know a thing about it.

With each new poem, the reader feels cued in to some private, profound insights and is left wanting to maintain this connection to a writer who has eased into a mature, unflinching stride.