Diane Sytarchuk-Kent states in her dedication to her poetry collection, Din Din: Book of No-nonsense Poetry#1, that her poetry isn’t meant for high-falutin readers. “My poetry is by no means great and worthy of literary praise,” she writes. “It is, [sic] just- [sic] meant to please all who love a good rhyme and to reat [sic] out loud.” She notes that the book was written for her extended family and her autistic son, all of whom love rhyme.
Rhyme is, indeed, the guiding principle of the many poems in this hefty collection. From the first lines of the first poem, “Sign Your Name,” readers will understand that rhyme trumps meaning: “You can tell. All is well./ You can almost smell. All is well/ It can’t be hell. All is well./ We can all see. Turn the key/ How beautiful they are, tee-he!”
The poems’ subject matter ranges from the speaker excoriating a person who is two faced, (“Your Face is Two-Ply,”) to lamenting a bad headache (“My Aching Head”) to celebrating a beautiful bird (“The Majestic Snowy Owl”). Most poems are two to three pages in length and are framed with the author’s doodles illustrating words and ideas from the poem.
Read in the spirit they were intended, the poems offer some fun, and the author’s ability to keep a rhyme going is, indeed, impressive: “My head is as hard as a rock/ But I come from good stock/ I am also form a large flock/ I come from/ the school of hard knocks.”
Unfortunately, a little of this goes a long way, and readers will quickly tire of work that’s largely nonsensical, rather than “No-nonsense” (as the title indicates) and goes on for pages. Much shorter pieces, carefully curated, would have been far more effective.
As is, general readers will find this work nearly 700 pages of empty calories. Still, the author’s inner circle will likely enjoy her silly sense of humor.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
