REVIEW   |   By Cheryl Antao-Xavier  »  Oneal Walters’ third book Frozen Stare retraces his formative years as a youth growing up in a troubled neighborhood in Toronto’s west-end. Graphic poems and photographs of former hangouts track this ‘childhood revisited’.

The poems are honest reflections of a man who has moved on and out of the world of his youth, yet in many respects carries that world with him, indelibly etched in memory. Hard lessons and impressions of vulnerable, formative years lodge in our subconscious to define who we become as adults, how we act and react as individuals.

A fighter, a victim, a survivor – we walk on in life bearing scars – visible and invisible – of the past. The poems in Frozen Stare chip away the crusted exterior of maturity, to reflect on the defining moments of the author’s past, of a youth when trust was nipped early, hurts lodged like burrs in the psyche, and young love was intense and image-defining.

Frozen Stare is a poetic journey that reveals much about the writer in the words and in between the lines. Of why he is what he is today – the unique perspective, the caring sensibility and most especially the survivor’s tenacity in taking charge and making good of one’s own life. Readers across the demographic strata of class and race and creed will catch glimpses of their own journey in this poetic passage through a ‘childhood revisited’.

• Frozen Stare: The Childhood of a Young Poet, published by The Age Begins Books; ISBN  978-0-9738573-1-3; available from www.theagebegins.com and on Ebay.