Remember Polaroid photographs? Moments of time captured in a single picture, developed in minutes, as long as you don't shake the picture too hard and too fast. Many times in the past several years, Emily Vieweg's poems have earned comments like, "a photograph in words," and "a polaroid on the page." Frequently encouraging embracing the art in the everyday, Vieweg's but the flames explores the beauty of the mundane, the extraordinary of the ordinary, and finding inspiration through music, art, everyday activities, and both the ugliness and wonder of the human condition.
Vieweg's poems in but the flames dance between the reality of mental health issues in "BiPolar Is," "Say Hello, Social Anxiety," "An open letter to my depression," and "Everything About This is Wrong." The bravery in telling-it-like-it-is and finding the humor in the irritating brings another awareness to surviving mental illness and sharing the experience in a way that is accessible to any reader.
Woven between the anxiety and fear of living with mental illness are moments of relief, calm, levity and memories of innocent youth. Memories like "Jungle Gym" and "The First Friday in June" remind us to remember pleasant moments when engulfed in pain and anxiety.
This collection of poems transports a reader through Vieweg's reality: trepidation, calm, fear, levity, yearning, loss, grief, anger, laughter, peace, and bravery. A wise person once made a statement akin to "one cannot be brave without fear."
Vieweg is not fearless in this collection, she is brave. She is raw and she is real. She fears how the readers of the world will react to her view of our world and puts it out there anyway, in everyday language, so anyone may experience the beauty of the mundane.
"My goal, as an artist and as a poet, is to make what I see in the world available to other people."
