Storage Space: A Collection of Contemporary Poetry

By Darren A. Stein

Despite the continued study of poetry in Western school curricula, poetry is often regarded as either elitist or inaccessible, and there has been a declining interest in both the publication and purchase of poetic works within the broader community. Despite the cultivation of interest within a narrow literary field with poetry journals and writer’s associations, poets have struggled to convert their art into a mainstream commercial product the way that authors, sculptors, or musicians have done. This may well have hindered the popular development of the artform. Perhaps what adherents need to see are more poems on T-shirts, key rings, and lunch tins and more poets guesting on Big Brother or The Simpsons in order to help expand their audience?
Darren Stein aims to deliver a direct and comprehensible style of poetry that offers both profound and entertaining insights into everyday life and the human condition. Reminiscent of the styles of Robert Frost and Dorothy Parker, Storage Space offers a balance of both comedy and pathos through the fascinating experiences of its poet guide. Stein aims to abandon what he regards as the pretentiousness of obscure language and imagery that clouds the essence of a poem. To Stein, the aim of poetry is to communicate a universal truth however unique an experience may be to the poet who communicates it. Stein acknowledges that poetry is irrelevant; that it has no effect on the world around us, and where it to disappear, hardly anyone would notice. This does not, however, mean that poetry is untrue, for what we have learnt is that the truth itself is often also irrelevant.
What Stein wants most from his readers is that each will find at least one poem that speaks to them or makes them laugh. That they will find a poem makes them nod their head in recognition of some event or circumstance that is familiar to their own lives. He hopes that they might turn to their friend or partner and say “listen to this” as they read a poem aloud and then recommend the book to a friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 9, 2008
• ISBN: 9781669828747

Darren A. Stein

Darren Stein worked in the townships and squatter camps around Johannesburg and Soweto from 1992–1996. His fields of study included adult literacy, voter education, election monitoring, and subsequently the community policing project, which worked toward building reconciliation between local community groups and the postapartheid police forces. After suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his exposure to the extreme violence of the period, he immigrated to Sydney, Australia. He is married with two children and is now a much-loved and inspirational history teacher. His poems have appeared in various anthologies, including Over the Rainbow (1996), The Liquid Mirror (1998), and An Endless Place (1999).

Book preview

Storage Space

You have a rented storage space! he laughed contemptuously.

Whatever happened to the shed in the backyard?

It went with the backyard, I replied, thinking of my tiny

two-bedroom unit for my wife, my two children, and me.

You need to learn to get rid of your junk, he sneered.

If you don’t use it, you don’t need it.

So I thought of my little stockpile—among the odds and ends,

the baby cot and pram that we may or may not use again;

the antique furniture my grandmother left me, which isn’t

practical, but which I just don’t have the heart to throw away;

a bicycle which my son is still too small for, and the extra chairs

that we might need if we ever have that dinner party we’ve

been planning for years;

In the boxes: old books, comics, and CDs, which, like old friends,

provide a warm reminder of an earlier time, and like all

good friends, we daren’t betray.

My little storeroom is a window to my soul—a snapshot

of all my hopes and dreams, my memories, and relationships.

To discard it would be to reject a part of myself—to amputate

that which I find meaningful.

We all need a little space to store the things we treasure, no

matter if its worth cannot be weighed in gold. No one denies

a bloke a bank account where fictitious ones and zeros

rise and fall in virtual vaults but do not have the comforting

smell of granny’s inlaid side table, or the dusty CD you

used to play over and over again.

So I’ll keep my junk, thank you. I’ll risk being called

pretentious or oversentimental because there’s nothing

wrong with that. Like a child clinging to his teddy bear,

I gain security from my physical memories, and when I

am gone, then they can sell my junk, or my kids can

put a little bit of Daddy in their own storage rooms, which

is impractical, but which they too may lack the heart

to throw away.

Watching Old Men

Playing Tennis

Watching old men playing tennis,

Limbs held together with tape