“The Last Note Becomes Its Listener” brings us nostalgia

05/02/2019

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Poet Jeffrey Morgan paints a charming picture throughout

Reviewed by Johnny Walsh

In our younger, more formative years, we don’t always recognize what positive memories we hold onto until something incites them, nostalgia. You’ll drive down a street you haven’t driven down in a long time and suddenly you’re flooded with memories. For me, only God knows why, the smell of a new air conditioner when it’s first turned on makes me nostalgic. Nothing says nostalgia like Freon.

In his book The Last Note Becomes Its Listener, Jeffrey Morgan takes us on a poetic journey through a few major themes that include family, faith and spirituality, sex and love, sleeplessness. One piece in particular, Metronome, offers readers laughter, renewal and restoration. A striving to be a consistently stronger person and Morgan paints a charming picture of personal growth.

“On New Year’s Eve my family burn things

about ourselves we want to leave behind

by writing them on thin red slips of paper

and feeding them to candles”

Each piece in Morgan’s book has a gentle quietness to it, and the way its cadence is presented forces readers to slow down and absorb the message he wants to give to readers. This way of writing allows for a moment of meditation that in a busy world, people don’t often get. While not a poet myself, this reviewer highly recommends picking up a copy and soaking up the smell of a brand new air conditioner, or, whatever it is that brings you nostalgia.