Islands of Illusion

Islands of Illusion
Ernest Dempsey
World Audience
ISBN: 978-1-934209-23-3
Poetry
Reviewed by Eugen M. Bacon

“The Stillness of the air
Caressed the heart to trust”
The quotation above from And Then… almost captures the essence of [my] reception of this collection. Something simple yet tragic unexpectedly transforms into a cloak of probability or hope. The Silver Chain, for instance, is grim yet optimistic; Ego and Peace is as tranquil as it is brisk; Favor clutches a 17-word epic, four lines of endless story. In the same manner, peals of hope ring in the dirge of I Am All Your Voice; comfort and threat stride alongside On Her Way to Love; unforgettable plea shadows Lie to Me as it does Lambs are given no more.
Ernest Dempsey’s poetry is almost a story of that which is not, like Cassandra – purity and loveliness in wanton destruction. Throughout the collection, a curtain of grayness lingers in charming simplicity. Desolate islands are filled with color. A dance of light plays inside fog, and vice versa. Some poems are easy to read yet difficult to place and become like the finding of wisdom in the ramblings of a mad hatter, or quiet rebuke in the praise of a sage. Some lines could be tighter, an adjective less. Some are controlled, others quietly amok. Most poems are twisted, not warped. All are emotive, none removed. And there is always the element of surprise - silence inside the shout of a gun; a groan in a bellyful of mirth – that intrigues me to read more of Ernest Dempsey.