search index
of all issues

Search This Site Enter word(s) to search for:

A collection of poetry is a chance to tell a story through an extended set of metaphors and images. The books reviewed here - each is the author's first or second - are meditations on story, narrative and writing itself (perhaps all books of poetry are) and each is about beginnings and endings. Whether such beginnings lie in the asking of questions or in the birth of a child, each poet reflects on the path of living and learning. Just as a story's parts make it a comprehensible whole, these books of poems investigate the many parts - and the numerous stories - that bring wholeness to our lives.

Souvankham Thammavongsa's first book of poetry opens with a quote by philosopher Bertrand Russell that reminds readers of "the power of asking questions" and of seeking answers in "the commonest things in daily life." Small Arguments serves as a reminder of the elusive nature of easy, direct answers, and at the same time, of what "we will discover/ by plunging past peel"; going past the surface, seeking clarification in places we often neglect.

Many of the poems in Small Arguments were published previously in beautiful chapbooks hand-made by Thammavongsa over the past few years. Pedlar Press has remained true to those self published efforts, and this collection is quite similar in appearance to Thammavongsa's artfully homemade books. In a sense, Small Arguments is reminiscent of Jan Zwicky's Songs for Relinquishing The Earth (Brick, 1999), a collection that also began as a self-published work that, according to its prefatory note, "[connected] the acts of publication … with the initial act of composition, … a book whose public gestures were in keeping with the intimacy of the art." Thammavongsa and Zwicky share both a concern for the beauty of presentation, and poetic ways of exploring philosophical questions.

Small Arguments is concerned with the worldly wisdom one may find in the most common materials: a grasshopper, strawberries, a sea shell, even 'the ground.' Beginning with a poem chronicling the poet's lack of childhood reading material, we understand immediately the importance of words, and learning to read as a "way in" to some sort of knowledge. Thammavongsa leads us along in her search for explanations and incisive meanings. "The Lemon," she writes, "is an orange / that does not know / how to fill, to extend" while similarly Thammavongsa addresses the tangerine: "You / will have no answers." The elusiveness of wisdom is the platform for the poet's own small argument, that the key is not only to ask questions, but to listen to different voices. For example, she notes that the rain has "been talking to us / … saying the same thing / we've never listened to," while she honours the sapience of trees: "you know more than anyone."

The way Thammavongsa addresses these items, and her meditation on their characteristics, is stunning. For example, the coconut "does not know / tenderness," while the remnant of a bee's sting is "a mark / of how small a choice can be." The language in Small Arguments is spare, with words gently riding the page toward the right margins, leaving space in which the reader - prodded by the poet's deliberate voice - is apt to have her own questions. With her consciously observed and written first book, Souvankham Thammavongsa demonstrates that she knows "the weight of how much."

Jeffrey Thomson and Jim Slominski both offer collections dealing largely with themes of fatherhood and fear of potential loss. In The Country of Lost Sons, Thomson, who teaches at Chatham College in Pittsburgh, weaves together numerous ancient and biblical stories to express the anger, pain, regret and fear of losing one's child in "the murderous world." From pregnancy - "My wife worries and holds her belly. / The moony skin above her hips / tents and stretches from inside" - to the worry of coming death - "my son / is my elegy, waiting to be written" - Thomson expresses the anxiety and near obsessive fear of losing his child. "I don't want to make a bed of grief," he writes, "but I have a son."

Thomson centers his collection on the idea of story; the book's first line begins with reason and purpose, "Because it all begins with story." Thomson wants his poetry's narrative "to function / like a bridge, the distant shore / leafed out in rutty green, everything / rising out of the rotten dark," not an easy task, as he acknowledges in a piece about the process of compiling one's poems: "It all depends / on the arrangement." Thomson arranges his poems well; his tempered voice and astute attention to detail is evident throughout the book. He writes of "The first burn of fall that crisps / the maples" and in a poem about the collapse of the World Trade Center, he notes "the smoke wept out / like solder bannered / in the wind."

The poems in The Country of Lost Sons reverberate with a painful throbbing, yet much like the atrocious events described in many of the pieces, one can't help but be a "spectator in the theater of loss and anger." A friend told me that once you have a child, your life suddenly becomes focused on making this a better world for that child. One can see Thomson grappling with the pain and violence of the world - the war in Kosovo, a fight between young children in the sand - and wanting somehow to change the world's gruesome narrative. As the child's father, as the adult, as the author, sometimes the tragedy is too much to look at; in one scene, the poet admits, "It's God / who doesn't want to watch" the drama unfold here on earth.

In Forever the last time, Jim Slominski - whose son Jake was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating genetic disease - tackles many of the same hopes and fears as Thomson. Many of the poems in Slominski's second book describe domestic scenes: Slominski's wife making lasagna or the contents of the family's basement. Unfortunately, at times these pieces, each of which hold great potential, are quaint or cliché. Coming from a People's Poetry tradition, these poems are occasionally too prosaically plain, particularly compared to Jeffrey Thomson's lyrical and melodious meditations on some of the same subjects.

By far, the best poems in this collection are the ones about Jake; Slominski's voice, which is both tender and thoughtful, stands out in these pieces. In 'Under Covers' the poet snuggles beside his sleeping son, "Up against him / I steal as much as I can / while he sleeps, gather and build / a hot glow … We radiate a while." We catch a glimpse of a father struggling with the heartbreaking probability that he will outlive his son. Many of the poems consider the pain, and even guilt, of watching Jake suffer while others are healthy. Slominski quotes Robert Frost, remarking "How little my good health / ever did anyone near me." He reflects on Jake's birth and life's obstacles, "the cord coiled around you. / Life, and one / of its many nooses."

Many of Slominski's poems are extremely powerful, and the poet's very real anticipation of death provides interesting counterpoint to Jeffrey Thomson's dreamed and envisioned loss. However, if drawing comparisons, Thomson's collection contains by far the best poetry of the two. Forever the last time does offer some incredible moments of optimism and grace. Slominski's fatherly observations are generously sincere, from the rhythms of his sleeping household to the interactions of Jake with his younger sister. In such moments, these poems present a "metaphor / of a new beginning" - as all good stories do.