Unopened by Doug HoekstraMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Back in 1999, when I began with the whole Internet radio thing with collegemusic.com there was a period where interviews only happened in chat (all typing, no audio), or with the lo-fi quality of a telephone microphone suction cup pickup. It was during this time I came across compelling songwriter Doug Hoekstra and his album Make Me Believe (One Man Clapping Records OMC 0018, 1999) with its memorable opener “Sam Cooke Sang The Gospel”. Hoping to get some recollection or saved artifact from this, possibly, very first interview on my show for my book, I reached out to Doug. While no 1999 traces emerged, such is the font of talent and creativity from Doug that I found instead an opportunity to enjoy his latest collection of poetry: Unopened (Five-Minute Books, 2019).
The title piece begins recalling his father and artfully dodges into a forgotten, left behind, unopened vinyl LP. “Vinyl” from a concluding section in this triptych also explores the magic of those spinning time capsules. That final set of poems explores the mysteries of interactions after groups of pieces on the personal and greater worlds. Broadly, there is little form here in the sense of rhyme and meter in these prose pieces while there is an intriguing similarity to a style of rigid form: the haiku. Know you the typical characteristic of the haiku, that there is a division somewhere in the tiny poem, so that the focus on the first, obvious thing, switches to another exposing a subtle relationship between the two in a that is insightful and sometimes surprising? These pieces tend to end that way, drawing me from first line to the last.
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