I picked up this book just this summer at the Friends of the Christian County Library book sale. It’s a chapbook, for which I would have paid a buck at the Friends of the Springfield County Library Book Sale (or got in a bundle for a buck), but as this was the Christian County Library which sells books by the bag, I probably paid a nickel for it. But it’s definitely worth more than that. The book is inscribed to the Christian County Library by the author in 2015, which must be an interesting story as the poet is from the upper penninsula of Michigan and the inscription is dated seven years after the chapbook was published (by a chapbook publisher, perhaps not by the poet herself).
I enjoyed this book more than other collections I have read for two reasons: The poet is someone around my age, reminiscing and navigating relationships in middle age, so it’s not grandmother poetry nor is it instapoetry written by the very young who have not read much actual poetry and cannot dialog with tradition by extending it or defying it. Also, the poet often uses a simple declarative sentence as the first line of the poem, which I’ve been doing a lot with my recent poems. I half-remember an adage that a poem is a descent into hell, and the first line tells you how far you’ll go, but I cannot find it on the Internet. I attributed to Frost, but I cannot confirm that via Internet search.
Thematically, it’s a lot of reminiscing about past relationships but not in the college professor enumerating body count way that you get too often in professional male poets. Also, some reflections and musings on current relationships thrown in. Some depth to many of them, some good line length and rhythm, but a couple are the short line breaks that are self-consciously poems.
So, yeah, a cut above other poetry I’ve read. It flags a little in the middle poems–enough that I thought I might need to read the first poems again to make sure my previous judgment of not bad was still correct, but later poems returned to form. So some filler material, but some good poems within.
Strangely enough, the author only seems to have come out with this single chapbook of poetry (and a collection about Michigan cherries, as the author is from the upper penninsula). Of course, I cannot knock it, as my output aside from twee blog posts and extensive documentation for losing causes has been thin in recent years as well.
Still, this is what I hope for when I pick up a cheap chapbook (redundant, I know): Something that I really enjoy in spots rather than merely read.
