Book Review and Analysis

Bear in Mind
by Anne Whitehouse
Finishing Line Press, 2010

I going to try to play catch-up with Anne Whitehouse in her writing. In 2009 she published a volume of her poems called Blessings and Curses. In 2010, she published a chapbook, Bear in Mind, and in 2011 she published another chapbook, One Sunday Morning. Having previously reviewed Blessings and Curses here on The Golden Lantern, I'll now review Bear in Mind. I look forward to reviewing One Sunday Morning in an upcoming review on TheGoldenLantern.com.

Bear in Mind is a study of change and suffering, immutable and irreversible, which affects different kinds of beings. In the poems she distinguishes between two different kinds of suffering: suffering and death that is part of what is generally called the natural order of things, in contrast to suffering and death that is characterized by contingency, abruptness, and a pervading sense of tragedy and loss. She writes with poignancy about both kinds of change. With these themes, she builds on her earlier work, Blessings and Curses. That work describes change in different situations, as blessings or curses. So, the format in that work is more contrapuntal than Bear in Mind.

In Bear in Mind we find several poems on tragic loss that is not part of the natural order of change and death. There is death at the Twin Towers; we meet an old woman who suffers not just the frailty of old age, but dementia; a beloved pet dies not from old age but by being killed by a wild animal; plants are affected by the careless action of a drunken and sick old man; and a seascape with its still vital habitat is washed over by storm surge.

Given these breaks, these disruptions, in the natural order of things, the poet also describes how the the natural order has change and death built into it. This is the subject of several poems. It's in the natural order of things that Claire, the poet's daughter, grows up and, therefore, literally goes out of her mothers arms; the poet herself grows older, grows past her childbearing years, enters menopause.

As the poet distinguishes change and death in the natural order of things, from unnatural tragic death and pain, so does she make a fundamental distinction between two different approaches to experience: affirmation of the world and one's choices, and a turning away from the everyday, or denial of the importance of what Martin Buber called the "hallowing of the everyday,"

In the first poem of the chapbook, "Choices Apprehend You," the poet's reflections on gold safety pins on a store dress stimulate thoughts of St. Sebastian, who

... pierced with arrows
presented himself to the emperor
as living proof of the power
of God. Later pin-makers prayed
to him, archers invoked his name
to make their aim more true.

In a later stanza, the poet describes how he died:

he wouldn't keep quiet,
though he did not curse
for he thought his agony blest.
Eternity's magic
lived in his future
like an empty room
drenched in continuous light.
. . .
and the life he had was dross
compared to the golden nimbus
he dreamed as his end.

While his life is a living hell, his body pierced by arrows, St. Sebastian dreams of heaven. His reality having gone awry, he lives in fantasy. While some might consider this as religious faith, it is presented here as a kind of false consciousness that pulls the person from his actual situation. Other poems in the collection present similar situations. In "Indian Love Call" the suffering of the beautiful young woman who choses death in a grand gesture, can't reverse death. Assuming an ironic voice after describing the suicide, the poet writes:

This is the legend. Hear it and mock.
A thousand beery afternoons silver the air
with revel. Youth is immortal. Shatter
the sun, dive like the knife of derision
into the cold, the shimmerless. Envision
her splintered bones the eons of pebbles scatter,
absolving the stone's caress; tickle of fish.
And rise. You are not not drowned. Take back your wish.

As there is false consciousness in life, there's false consciousness in art. In "The Great State of Alabama," the poet portrays a wealthy audience viewing the work of an artist at an assembly. Here's her description of Nall from Troy:

Nall's art captivated, illustrated, tantalized, and rebelled,
seeping in our minds like memories without experience,
ghostly flickers of recognition that dogged us
into the fresh spring night.

Memories without experience is a marvelous phrase. It also closely describes the experience of the old woman with dementia, whom we meet again near the very end of the book in the next to last poem called "Bear in Mind." She is not able to live in the present with any constancy. Nor does the work of the artist, Nall, live in the present, nor the saint in his agony and his vision of Heaven, nor the young Indian maiden who commits suicide. These attitudes and modes of experience, as inauthentic or false consciousness, contrast with one's experience of nature as a living being, with its healing and cathartic power with whom one enters dialogue—albeit, the same nature that is bringer of change, including death.

What takes place between people—what Martin Buber called "the inter-human"—is valued and cherished when it occurs, particularly because there are no guarantees that it will happen, or it or anything like it, in the life of the person. Such experiences may be wonderful, but are characterized by contingency. They are forms of disclosure and communication with the other, which some people call grace. This sense of grace might come from connection with a personal God, a sense of unity with the universe itself, or with the universe as it manifests through creatureliness. And so, the poet cherishes memories of what is meaningful to her, tending to nature and her family despite the inevitable change and loss. The healing power of nature is expressed in this chapbook with intensity, as in Blessings and Curses.

What persists after death and remains real is our life experience and interaction with other living beings. This is the theme of several poems in Bear in Mind. As nature doesn't prioritize or set boundary posts among its various creatures, neither does the poet in her choice of themes or as objects of her affection or disaffection. So, here is a stanza from "Elegy For William:
guinea pig, 1995-2000":

Glossy-coated William
of the patient gaze
and delicate feet,
who'll no longer rest
his tired, heavy head
on my willing arm.
We will remember
this innocent creature
who came to harm.

The final poem, called "Bear in Mind," pulls together these themes. In the first stanza called "Sea Change,"

The water's breach into the shore was like forgetfulness eroding memory.

The second stanza, called "Her Age Advances on Her," describes the eighty-year-old woman's loss of memory which has altered her perception

not better or worse, but different—I couldn't have imaged it.

The stanza continues,

With less, she takes less for granted,
her once prickly self-absorption
smoothed to tempered gratitude.

The third stanza describes the poet's own life at 50 with her feelings of mixed blessings.

I bless this life I had to learn to trust
and want to have, away from those
who raised me and their endless woes.

The final stanza, "To Posterity," includes the lines:

Human creations live
in the connection expressed
to the beholder, renewed
with each encounter.

Anne Whitehouse is storyteller in all of her work. Her stories are told in poems that engage and pull the reader in. The tone of both Bear in Mind and Blessings and Curses is wistful at times, but affirmative and hopeful. Bear in Mind is short, easily transportable, and could be read in a single session or read slowly, one or more poems at a time. I consider it recommended reading not only in private but on a train or in a waiting room. Any time you want to go to a quiet spot in your mind and reflect a litte on the nature of change and permanency, please keep Bear in Mind in your mind.

Anne's books are available through Amazon and her website www.annewhitehouse.com.

Reviewed by Paul Dolinsky
editor@thegoldenlantern.com