Book Review

Whimsy, Reticence and Laud: Unruly Sonnets
by Grace Marie Grafton

This is a loose poetic narrative of the poet's life and art, as condensed into this slim volume of poems. The poems are visceral and striking in their imagery, with a reverence and feel for nature that is both hymnal and playful.

Several narrative strands appear and intersect. The interconnection between nature and the child, is the first strand Nature unfolds from simple elements and building blocks, to form more complex structures in the world. Likewise, the baby, and then the child, first apprehend nature as simple elements, forms and textures, and then are able to grasp more complex forms. This is accompanied by the recognition that some of the forms they experience are of living, organic beings. So, the child sees the world phenomenally, in its colors, and textures, then, as the abode of living beings, and finally, as a living being itself. Nature and the person could experience themselves through each other, for instance, water experiencing itself through human skin, and skin through water. So, we read in "From Generation"

...And sometimes water, mother of all,
holds the foot in an embrace, kisses it,
and the bones and skin know they began
here, in this element, began as this element.
Shall we say now, water walks on land?... (p. 28)

In a similar fashion, the poet in "Periphery" regards leaves as a manifestation of light:

...Leaves, light's augmentation, form edges
as the other element, where matter makes
the dance of light with its ancient partner,
dark. The shaded creates perception,
uncurling artifice,: line, curve, dot.
Beholder's eye, finger of god. (p. 37)

As the baby and the child learn to apprehend the world through sensation, so do they learn to apprehend the world poetically. This is part of the second narrative thread of the book, namely, that this book itself, is a kind of teaching primer for those who seek to apprehend the world, poetically. The titles are part of the teaching process. All one-word titles, they constitute a lexicon of poetic sentiment and vocabulary. Further, a given title and its accompanying poem, evoke the other. For instance, in the poem "Teacher" the teacher is the river, and the teaching are the ways in which the poet perceives the river, and communicates its nature:

...River talks quietly to itself.
Trees arch and breathe though the human
sees no breath. Invisible knowing,
This is where thought falls down into sand.
Very slowly... (p. 72)

The poem with its title, stimulates the child/poet/reader's direct experience of the world through their sensory awareness, and the empathetic sharing between the poet and the object of their poem. To apprehend the world poetically, is not a matter of adding poetic language to sensation. Rather, it a shared experience between the poet and their subject, the poem being a shared product of that union, not unlike their child. For instance, the reader is exhorted as follows, in "Unruly":

Wear no mask, glove no hand. If books weren't
necessary for rougher climbing and
my persistent trek after clarify,
barefoot would work fine. There's the ocean,
pouring salt water over unshod toes,
the tickle a comic slice, somersaults
along sand. To dissolve the sense of lost,
adopt weather as a worthy roof... (p. 12)

Many poems in the book express transformation or poiesis, which is the root of the word poetry. The poems voice the transformation of one thing into each, and nothing remains unchanged, even with death. Martin Heidegger, philosopher and occasional poet, describes poiesis as the meeting of the gods of heaven and earth in objects and in poems.

A third narrative strand is the connection between nature and culture. The poem "Scroll" (p. 26) describes the organic connection between the leaf of the living papyrus and what it becomes, a sheet for writing. Nature restores balance for humans, in their lives. There are also poems which express concerns about ecological problems, and also the distracting effect of distressful news of the day (as the Jonestown mass suicide) on one's life and sensibility.

Before I complete this review, permit me a few remarks about Grace Grafton, earlier book, Other Clues (reviewed here at TheGoldenLantern.com). The poems in Other Clues are like those in Whimsy, playful and reverential poems about nature, written in block paragraph form, as prose poems. I had earlier described those poems as phenomenological and reflective of experience, in tone, the poet haven taken one step back, from sensation to reflection, in the knowing process. In contrast the poems of Whimsy are phenomenalist or sense-based, and evocative. Both books present engaged and dialogical relationships between the poet and their subject matter. Different types of poems have different goals, and may require different poetic tools (which, hopefully, we could discuss further as a community in TheGoldenLantern-blog.tumblr.com)

I would like to end with a complete poem, and not continue to tease you with selections. It's hard for me to resist "Jostle" because it so beautifully combines many of the elements I described here- cosmogeneis and transformation in nature, and the poet's identification with nature.

Jostle

The world is never still. Moving, shifting,
rising. Is it that the molecules life
is made of are lonely, must constantly
nudge their neighboring manifestation?
Contact, communication, 'lectrical
charge. Or could it be, life is so in love
that molecules must kiss and hug and mate?
Water specks into drops into streams into
rivers. Matter gathering into palm fronds
or beetle's green lacquered wings beating
night air to bits that bump the eyeball
of a watching puma who wants to change
its prey into itself. Even in death
bodies transform. Not to exist is still. (p. 31)

Grace Marie Grafton's poems combine creative enthusiasm with the raw stuff of nature to produce poems filled with remarkable images, that are uplifing to the spirit. In themselves, they create optimism that humans will find ways past the calamities they have caused themselves and their fellow creatures on this planet.

Whimsy, Reticence and Laud: Unruly Sonnets
by Grace Marie Grafton
Review by Paul Dolinsky
Editor, The Golden Lantern
editor@thegoldenlantern.com
http://thegoldenlantern-blog.tumblr.com