Review: Behind the Rhododendron

Leah Angstman
The Coil
Published in
2 min readJun 27, 2016

Amanda Oaks
Poetry
8 pages
1 3/4” x 2”
Poems-For-All #710
24th Street Irregular Press
1008 24th St
Sacramento, California 95816 USA
Free, plus postage
Review originally published on 8/14/09

This is yet another of the teeny tiny Poems-For-All series, itty bitty books distributed for free and containing one poem per book, left behind for the world to enjoy on buses and park benches, in coffee shops and libraries, hand-to-hand with friends or strangers. The books are beautifully put together, and I am quite in love with them.

This is another of Amanda Oaks’ poems, this one not as lovey-dovey as the last one I reviewed, which gives it a little more appeal to me. The poem is actually quite fascinating, about some romp as a younger kid with a love (or even a deep friendship with a close friend, if not a love) out behind the rhododendron, through the gap in the fence, and into great-grandfather’s orchard, feeling no fear or shame amidst a gunfire warning and scrambling home before anyone could catch them. It is a story of innocence, of memory, of true feelings, wrapped up in the tiniest little package you have ever seen. Just darling.

--

--

Leah Angstman
The Coil

Historian, The Coil & Alternating Current editor-in-chief, book nerd, author of OUT FRONT THE FOLLOWING SEA (Regal House, Jan 2022). https://leahangstman.com.