Review: Drunk Dialing the Divine

We are still talking to Amber Koneval about her collection of poetry. She is a very busy young lady with lots of aspirations.  To recap: She is slated to graduate from Regis University,located in Colorado, in December of 2013 with a double major in English and Religious Studies through the Honors track. She currently has a 3.8 GPA. She comes from a larger, close knit family. This family ‘shamelessly’ promotes her writing.(her words)

What is your book about?

‘Drunk Dialing the Divine’ is a poetry collection that takes the reader through a bit of an overview of the beginning of my faith journey. For me, the biggest obstacle to a complete faith and trust in God has been my anger. Not that it's any kind of petty anger- this is anger about world injustices, anger about violence done to myself, my friends and my family, anger about sins committed in the name of the God I love. For a long time, I convinced myself that the best way to deal with this anger was to ignore it. Through poetic exploration of my own feelings, however, I came to realize that I needed to be honest with myself in order to be honest in my devotion to God; and I needed to be honest in my devotion to be able to be fully invested and connected with Him. So, in short, Drunk Dialing the Divine is an exploration through that anger to a place of peace and resolve, from which I could hope to continue to grow in my faith much more genuinely. My hope is that, by sharing this journey, I will be able to reach out to others who are similarly stuck in their own anger.

 My Review

Amber Koneval has written a collection of avant garde poetry. The poems are in the free-verse style.

Her style is unique to me. She goes deep with her thoughts with each of her poems speaking of God as she sees Him. Her choice of title speaks of the times a person will call out to God and not know why he or she does it. On the back cover, she writes: “Drunk Dialing the Divine is an attempt to capture a glimmer of the emotional struggle of the deeply faithful. Though each poem begins in a negative space, they resist both the angry and the naively optimistic ending—instead finding a ray of hope in the maxim ‘Things are because God is.’”

The following is one of Ms. Koneval’s poems.

Sola Scriptura

It seems like, nowadays,

We take so much pride

In what we don’t know

As if it’s a point of pride

To leave the stars unnamed

To sail the seas with our eyes

Shut, and never touch the water

Because the ignorance

Is preferable

To the awesome knowledge

Of wonder.

Sitting smug, we major in

Not knowing

Filling books with anti-facts

And the statistics of

Emptiness

Harnessing the comforting warmth

Of blindness

To block the harsh glare of awe

Where dumbness would suffice. . .

Is that why we think we can contain

God

In a book? *

Disclaimer: Ms. Koneval contacted me through a professional network and asked if I would be willing to review her collection of poetry.  All she asked was that I give an honest impartial review. I purchased a copy of Drunk Dialing the Divine for myself.

·        Used with permission