My Fault by Leora Fridman. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2016. 86 pages. $ 16.00, paper.
The ambiguity of Leora Fridman’s title, My Fault, is compelling. Perhaps this is a collection of confessions of guilt, intended to clear the speaker’s conscious? Fridman does not offer a direct answer to this question, but rather leaves it up to the reader to interpret the meaning behind her words. While her prose poems are very clear in language and sentence structure, the message is often hidden and requires a second or third read. Sentences that seem to be nonsensical at first, will eventually reveal their meaning, like in “Factions”, where she writes:
I have not found
any skin yet but I will
be there soon, just as
soon as I can fight off
the beavers peeling fibers
from my scalp, trying
to open my mind,
making me feel far
more awake than
I ever intended to find
myself, laughing at
how much human I am
My Fault does not focus on one particular topic, but on a plethora of personal thoughts of the speaker, evolving around everything and anything that is important to them.
– Tanja Vierrether, MAR