Sept. 10, 2013
La Luz De La Tormenta/The Light
of the Storm by Carlos Parada Ayala (112 pages, Zozobra Publishing, $12.00)
The Year of What Now by Brian Russell
(96 pages, Graywolf Press, $15.00)
Trouble behind Glass Doors:
Poems by Walter Bargen (103 pages, BkMk Press, $13.95)
A Raft of Grief: Poems by
Chelsea Rathburn (72 pages, Autumn House Press, $17.95)
Poets still
fall in love, but some also live in war zones and report on those conflicts. Carlos
Parada Ayala writes of Central American wars, while Brian Russell’s battlefield
is the oncology department. Walter Bargen and Chelsea Rathburn turn to domestic
sites of tragedy.
Poems in Carlos
Parada Ayala’s first book “La Luz De La Tormenta/The Light of the Storm” demand
attention. His slashes of color create unforgettable images, like his
comparison of love to “a bloody crucifix/on a bishop’s chest” (“Pulse”). Parada
Ayala presents important topics that match his dramatic language. As an El
Salvador native, he was witness to the 1970s to 1980s civil wars. This tragedy is
the backdrop for this bilingual Spanish and English collection.
His poem
“Whale” presents apocalyptic visions of destruction: “Palm trees crumble/like
spent matchsticks” and “The sky explodes and shatters.” These images are
both memories and continuing nightmares for the narrator, who awakens to
find himself adrift in peacetime. What remains as he stands in the market is
“an endless and vile melancholy.” Memories keep the war alive, years into the
future.
The book
illustrates war and, finally, recoveries. “Day of the Dead” is a poem that
begins with despair but ends with optimism. Parada Ayala writes: “I carried my
country on my back like a sack/full of ill-fated chapters.” He laments the
common graves and “quetzal birds extinguished.” But the last stanza asserts:
“Now I rise with my head held high,/carrying my country in the deepest part of
my chest, a sanctuary for my people.” In a “Letras Latinas Blog” interview, the
poet writes: “‘Day of the Dead’ is my prayer to keep up the hope.”
Parada Ayala
shows how the effects of war last a lifetime, an important lesson as military
initiatives continue across the globe.
Another kind
of war is one within bodies, in the form of disease. Brian Russell’s first book
“The Year of What Now” recounts a battle with cancer. The book explains how the
measured world of medical violence is as unsettling as any other. The narrator
watches in horror as painful procedures become routine. Anyone touched by
ravages of cancer treatment can relate to this sequence.
Russell shows
how the hospital world has its own rules of engagement. In “Tepid” the narrator
states, “I still can’t bring myself to watch/them stick the needle in your
back.” He compares the patient to “the tortured trunk of a wind ravaged tree”
with “ashen limbs.”
Russell’s
book, nonetheless, is not dreary. The caretaker elicits admiration. Gallows
humor eases pain. The narrator compares cafeteria dining with a chain
restaurant down the road, “where the food is equally inedible,” and the jab at
institutional food is an easy joke. Also, the normalcy of “wonderfully
obnoxious” families is unexpected respite from slow grief.
To spoil the
ending, the treatments are successful. In “You’re Welcome” the narrator writes,
“you’re not dying/faster than the rest of us,” and so the book’s narrative
shifts from crisis to commentary about everyone’s eventual death.
A
further spoiler: the narrative is contrived, not autobiography, despite the
eye-witness perspective. In an interview with Graywolf Press editor Jeff
Shotts, Russell describes his inspiration: “I see the husband and wife as
homages to people in my life who have been altered by serious illness. While
many poems draw from lived experience, the work as a whole is one of the
imagination.” Russell’s inventiveness and his heart make him a poet to remember.
“Trouble
behind Glass Doors” is Walter Bargen’s sixteenth book of poetry. He excels at
anecdotal verse, where incidents that could be coffee group stories expand into
larger moments. The most arresting of these poems are masterpieces about crimes
and other domestic wars experienced as daily news.
“Neighbors”
is one of the most chilling. It begins “When a neighbor shows up at his door/Wearing
a black ski mask, carrying something large /And automatic . . . .” The rest of
the story can be extrapolated from a newspaper front page. In this particular
story, one faction imprisons the other in a nightmarish replay of the
Holocaust.
In
Bargen’s poem “Overdose,” he notes how “hardly anyone/bothers to look up from
their newspapers,” as a drug user creates a scene in a mall. Bargen shows how a
perfectly ordinary setting can turn sinister. In this public square, jaded crowds
avoid engagement.
Bargen
is Missouri’s first poet laureate, and the volume includes some autobiographical
poems from that experience. In “Poet as Grand Marshall of the Fall Parade,” the
unathletic poet contrasts his odd public role with that of a celebrity sports
figure. He considers adding football pads to his suit. Even such lighter poems have
an edge of social critique, as Bargen shows how banal Midwestern communities
have misplaced values. These accompany a culture of violence.
Chelsea
Rathburn, in “A Raft of Grief,” finds personal struggles can be stark, inner
battles as she writes about alcoholism and divorce. The poet uses many tricks of poetic
language to create safe distance from anguish.
“Sweet
Nothings” is about women telling tales on past lovers. They find “the old
wounds feel a little softer/with a laugh track, so the stories keep coming.” Reminiscences
about “Italian lingerie,” pillow talk, and a dominatrix role entertain the
group. The humor evaporates, however, as
one notes: “‘he said he owned/me for the hour—they only play at giving up
control.’” The see-saw of Rathburn’s poetic lines emphasizes the dramatic
momentum of anger.
The
poet uses a “laugh track” again in “This Poem Has Had Too Much to Drink.” At
first, the extended comparison is slapstick: “This poem can’t talk to strangers/until
after the third gin and tonic” and “This one fell into a bush at the party.” Finally,
as the narrative arc reaches conclusion, the problems continue in new form:
“This poem is in recovery and can’t stop talking about it.” This is one of many
inventive, fresh approaches in the book.
One
of the last poems, “The Mother of Beauty, Etc.,” has a striking image that
recapitulates the dangers of amour. A couple kiss in the woods, until they
realize a nearby “white shape watching” is a deer’s skull. Life and death
intertwine, as they find themselves “studying the bones” rather than each other.
Rathburn
has a sure voice, one that will continue to be heard, like those of these other
poets who look beyond confections of simple love poems.
Denise Low, Kansas City Star
Natural Laws of Poetry Writing Workshop 2014
