Poetry Book Review: "You are White Inside"

“A masterful accommodation”:  B.R Lyon’s You are White Inside

Three Rooms Press, 2011; 70 pages, 15.00 ISBN 978-0-9835813-2-1

by Elizabeth Harrington

B.R. Lyons’ poems travel far, covering a taboo relationship with an Egyptian partner, a clash of cultures, a brother who dies, a mother who represents “unfinished business,” and the “ticking bomb” of HIV terrorism.  In addition to portraying the mortals in his life, Lyon invokes spiritual and ancient history, through Agrippa, Medusa, Buddha, and Jesus (who “could be that guy with his milk crate on the subway”). This book is raw with honesty, served up with lively, lyrical, intelligent language, (including “local color” snippets in Arabic), compelling metaphor and imagery, and humor and wit. 
Through the alchemy of poetry, the result is the conversion of life in all its sordid glory, into art.

Read more...January 2012 issue of Gently Read Literature, pages 11-12.