Review by Ellen Lord
My old friend Charlie kept telling me about the poetry of Andrew Riutta. Now, Charlie isn’t a poet but he is featured in some of these poems…so I didn’t take him too seriously until I finally ordered Blessed. I usually take my time in reading a new poet…but I read this gorgeous work in one setting.
These are character-study poems of praise, heartache and redemption. Riutta uses achingly gorgeous descriptions of the ragged and raw side of life, including his own. I can imagine him sitting in an old-timey diner scribbling poems with his ‘tobacco-stained fingers’ on a coffee-stained yellow tablet.
Riutta’s poems are written as Haibun and I love his sage, original voice. Whether he pens a love story, an elegy or a dirge, this poet gives us a soul-view into the behavior and motives of folks who slouch along on the perimeter of society. He is a confessional poet with a deep soul-view into the bowels of alcoholism, addiction and recovery. That said…. there is a glow of quiet redemption throughout this brilliant book of poems.
As with all good Haibun, Riutta uses nature as Muse—birdsong & sky, bees chasing flowers and ‘clouds of every ilk’. He was raised in the NW regions of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is a master at getting to the raw, wilderness howl of ‘almost every despair’.
As a behavioral health therapist & poet, I believe this is a ‘must read’ for everyone in recovery. These poems ring like little Buddha gongs in my heart.
Ellen Lord, author of Relative Sanity: Poems, published by Modern History Press 2023.