Be warned that this review is entirely biased, as I’ve long
considered Schumejda one of my favorite poets. And while this collection isn’t
a recent release, harkening back to 2008, it remains a strong and influential
collection of work. As with many of her poems, these document the intimate
moments between people and in workaday settings, but at the same
time lifting the casual veneer of life to peer at the inner workings of our
hearts and minds.
As she notes in “Scrambled Eggs”: “We form at scrambled eggs
/ and one another’s intentions. Outside, saturated soil / leaves earthworms
vulnerable: / the robins and clouds show no mercy.”
Schemujda is able to hint at so much here, and in different
ways, all while using the simplest of scenes and images. A relationship over a
meal may seems like simple parity of existence, small talk and planning, back
and forth, but who among us has not sat across a table with someone we loved and
wondered at the intention of this question or that, or wanted to ask something
or gauge something without saying as much, all while eating scrambled eggs, delicate
things we break apart and mix together to make something else, a symbol for a
relationship if ever there was one. And then the worms, exposed to the rain and
birds, the pieces of ourselves we reveal that become, it sometimes seems, picked
apart and destroyed by life, love, and luck.
Throughout the two books in this one collection, one titled The Truth is Too Heavy, the other Two Hands Folded in a Prayer, Schumejda
explores quiet little triumphs and tragedies, the subtle cracks that form in our psyche, whether at at
church or work or while cooking dinner, and she shows how these cracks form
craters, how these craters damage a landscape, or, depending on your view, add
the beautiful scars that make a life true and real and worth living. Nothing is
so subjective as how we each came to where we are now, but in Schumejda’s
poems, we can find those quiet universal moments we all understand, run our fingers along those scars and nod.
Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda (sunnyoutside press) is available online, and deserves a spot
on your bookshelves.
No comments:
Post a Comment