Like sunflowers in late September, many of these poems seem to have dark roots. This is not a brooding poetry, necessarily, though melancholia seems not far off. There is about the poems an essential sadness, like an aroma.
In "A Romance of Roses," the poet has learned of a man in France
who loved his wife the way Romeo loved Juliet,
the way Tristan was beholden to Iseult.
The poet wonders "if you can love me beyond all/words." The poem concludes a little darkly, a little wryly, a little sadly:
I wanted to tell you about love in France,
but when I called out, my voice
wouldn't carry to the other room,
so I fell asleep, certain in the dark
that you would try your very best,
because of your kindness,
not to disturb me, or wake me
later, when you'd join me in our bed.
Perhaps we need to be disturbed, woken, all of us, else we miss the fullness of this life.
The tough wisdom? I have already quoted some of those lines which speak to me:
... Could this be true –
that only a strict confinement of roots
yields the sweetest fruit?
and
For whatever it takes, the sea makes payment....
and
... As long as I can laugh, now
and then, I suppose, it's all right.
and
I wish I could write something splendid
about death, but my father has been dying
for years....
Wise and tough lines such as these abound in the poems. Other examples might be taken from "Days of Awe:"
... To remember
is the kind of hope you
will not claim.
and from "Autumn Begins in Cluj, Transylvania:"
All those who stayed on are proud to be hungry.
Their relatives, far from home, in their new language,
do not know hunger or pride....
and pride, like dry leaves, falls to hunger's
bare ground.
and the final lines of the final poem, "Border Questions:"
What is a border?
The ark in your chambered heart
with its twin cargo, wonder and belief,
the scrolled tide of
an untethered conviction
that on the border
every brink is the core.
On the book-flap of this collection, Steve Orlen suggests that "the whole book feels like a vision in which we view the common dramas of our lives: what leads up to them, what ensues." These poems are little dramas. Some rise and fall is being played out, as in Greek tragedy, whether of humans or of something else. We see the poet's role here is to apprehend the drama, like tension in a room, and to give it voice. There are people talking to each other in these poems; or the poet is talking to them; or she is lining up the things her attention has gathered in such a way that we converse with the meaning of them.
Continued at MAPMAKER - 6, below
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