Review of “A Concerto for an Empty Frame” by Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios

Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios’s A Concerto for an Empty Frame is an interesting and unique collection of poems that weaves together themes of memory, grief, love, and the passage of time. The book is structured musically, with sections titled to reflect the movements of a concerto, enhancing the lyrical and rhythmic quality of the work.

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios was a professor emeritus at American University in Washington D.C., heading the vocal and music programs there. She has traveled the world as a singer. That actually explains a lot in terms of the structure of the book and its musical influences/inspirations.

There's a lot of this book that seems experimental in nature, or at least very outside-the-box. Poems like “Seed,” “Straw Light,” and “Breakout” feature a lot of staggered lines and ornamentation, almost like musical notes on a sheet.

It should be noted that both “Straw Light” and “Breakout” are cento poems, using lines from various other poems and poets including Joy Harjo, Emily Berry, Julie Hensley, Rajav Mohabir, and Chris Abani.

This is very unique and we've rarely seen these kinds of poems come through our contests.

Probably the most unique (and strangest) of all the poems is “The Rag Lady Casts a Spell.” It is described as a “cadenza,” a solo passage typically found in a concerto or other musical composition in which the performer showcases their technical skill and interpretive abilities. The poem itself is bizarrely arranged, more so than any other poem in the book. Text appears inside and outside rectangular boxes, even appearing in different directions (like up and down instead of the standard left and right).

In terms of more typical literary/poetic devices, there's actually a lot of repetition in this poem, creating a beat/rhythm. For example, “maybe, maybe” is repeated as well as the word “away.” “Could be me?” is also repeated throughout the poem. You might describe this as creating a conscientious or thought-provoking aura around the poem.

Repetition is one of the key techniques that the poet utilizes. For example, in “Still Flying Over Lockerbie,” the word “never” is repeated, again in different contexts. It should briefly be noted that this particular poem also features staggered lines, forming two separate frames, almost like dueling sides of a duet.

The poem "Seed" explores themes of growth, transformation, and the potential for rebirth. What's unique about this poem, besides the staggered lines we earlier mentioned, is that sections of this poem are deliberately crossed off, almost as if the writer were self-correcting or changing, sorta like a seed into a tree (perhaps fitting the title) or a caterpillar into a butterfly.

There are some other cool and interesting things that the poet does throughout the book.

Beautiful and colorful examples of alliteration and assonance are sprinkled throughout, for example (from “Riding Home in Your White Valiant After the Opera”):

“...green and gentle and brilliant as glass.”

“...stars sprinkled us with sugar.
I can only remember sugar and stars”


The poem we'll transcribe erroneously as “N(t)=N 0 e 𝜏 ln (2))t1/2” demonstrates a great use of anaphora (as well as repetition) with the phrase “What is the half-life...” beginning each stanza.

This poem was actually one of our favorites because it made us think about the arbitrariness of certain facts and statistics. In truth, some things (like memories and love) can't be quantified. They are unquantifiable and invaluable. Furthermore, this book also touches on concepts like impermanence and the dangers of wanting instant gratification.

“Unbuttoned Blues” is an interesting poem for a lot of reasons, but one of our favorite reasons is the way that it uses and emphasizes the “th” and “st” sounds in words like “there” and “those” and “dust of stars this dust that we don’t trust.” In that last example, notice how the “st” reoccurs at the beginning and end of different words.

There's also idiomatic language used throughout the book, particularly with similes like:

“fragile as an eggshell”

“...the wrong octave... like waves of the sea rising and falling”

“like bitter honey”

Personification is also used like with:

“the moonlight spilled its gold-white perfume over me”

“stars are still sobbing”

This is a very ambitious and very unique book of poetry.

Check it out on Amazon!