Review
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Title: Stunt Double
Author: Elizabeth C. Garcia
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Genre: Poetry
Year Published: 2015
Number of Pages: 28
Price: $14.49
Reviewed by Trudy Thompson for the Association For Mormon Letters
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia is a stay at home mom of two young children, who spends her time watching episodes of The Walking Dead with her husband and keeping up with her children in Georgia. She received her BA in Humanities from BYU in 2000 and her MA in English Literature from Valdosta State University in 2003 before teaching for seven years. She began writing and studying poetry in earnest in 2007. She won her first contest in 2008, and has since been published in Irreantum, Boxcar Poetry Review, Poets and Artists, Segullah Literary Journal, 491 Magazine, Penwood Review, The Resurrectionist, among others.
Stunt Double is a collection of 19 wide ranging poems that explore the difficulties of trying and failing to overcome self, the difficulties of empathy, and a poet’s duty to understand and persist in imagining the pain of others. Some of the titles of the poems include: Atlanta to Salt Lake, about driving from the one town to the next between the two cities. It is a tale of drifting and compares the trip to life and its challenges. Other titles include: Dad Feels Like Daniel Boone Inside, Wonder Woman’s First Stunt Double, Dead Dog Poem, about what the author would do if it looked like she would hit a dog while driving a car, Ode To The Truck Driver, 1978. I found the most poignant and meaningful poem to be What I Will Now Do For You-to my friend who has lost her child. This eloquently written poem talks about the tragic ways people die and what the emergency rooms, and the loved ones left behind, experience. The poem ends with these gut wrenching words: Wipe the sweat from your forehead. Bear the sear of blisters starting at your heels because your shoes aren’t right for this.
I consider this small collection of poems to be abstract in nature, and the reader can assume the author meant one thing or the other, and the intent of a particular poem is not always clear and concise. The reader is left to bring meaning to them from their own perspective and life experiences. One caution: there are several poems, sexual in nature, which might embarrass and offend the average Latter-day Saint reader.