I first read Joan Colby’s poetry a couple of years ago and still remember the impression – tight, compact diction and multi-layered images. It’s rare that even poems by the poets I know by name leave a mark when embedded in large journals among 20-30 other poems, but Colby’s poems have that memorable quality. So it’s been a pleasure seeing her Selected Poems in print and discovering work covering four decades.
What impresses on first read is the constant connection between the personal realm and the universal. A family memory in “Evening – 1943” through the technology of shortwave radio intertwines the local with the backdrop of war. Surroundings, which include the “mantel and blue serpents of/gas fire in their white brick nest” become reflected in the father’s “rimless glasses.” Everything is connected, including Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a reference that bookends the memory with the opening and closing lines.
There is a power to Colby’s selection of allusions. They do not exist simply to show off the author’s superior intellect but to connect the person to their culture, the reader to their history, the poet to her tradition, and to breath something new into it.
In “Crazy Rain” the speaker connects the illusions we wrap around ourselves for a sense of security to changing feelings on faith and nature. There are no wasted words. Childhood is infused with “act(s) of contrition,” remembered “indulgences,” “guardian wings/of angels plucked/for your comforter.” Each attempt at self-preservation meets with the reality of rain, taking the path of least resistance, until Colby’s provides a dramatic epiphany, “What are you doing here/ expecting to be loved.” a phrase uttered as a statement, not a question. The poem is both questioning and a coming of age.
Each aspect of living becomes fair game, the event on the opposite side of the world that leaves a girl looking at a picture book reeling from its impact. “The Atrocity Book” shows a companion to the idea of witness poetry. While those who have borne the effects of atrocity have a need to speak, those who were not there but remain stunned by its aftermath have a need to speak back. Her recollection of a disfigured Jewish girl pulls empathy from the horrific, but in an unsentimental way, describing the young girls who encountered the picture, as “wondered, twitching/with excitement” and later “two cleavers/ of honed curiosity.”
In “Roadkill” the poet pulls the sublime again from the seeming insignificant and unattractive sight that many would pass over without reflection. A carcass treated as a nuisance first, then as “blacktop littered as if/figments of imagination.” Colby could leave this as a simple statement on our tendency to pass over the death of a creature, to not be inconvenienced by it. But she ties it to its importance, “the man . . . /seeing ducklings on the tollway,/Left his car running and rushed to their rescue. He was hit/Almost at once, then hit again.” In “Roadkill” it is not just two different mentalities toward small animals but different mentalities toward life itself. And an empathy not just toward small things, but a realization each is a twist of fortune or an act away from being on the other side of the coin.
The connections drawn by Joan Colby in her poetry make this a book worth reading multiple times.
By Allen Grey
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/827592430?book_show_action=true&page=1
By Donald Armfield
"Each story is a myth
In which someone discovers fire,
And the it all begins. "
This is collected works from previous published poetry collection of Joan Colby. After reading this I have a new book on my wishlist. "How The Sky Begins To Fall" and have a new favorite poet. Her writing style is amazing, weather you know what she is feeling or not. The words alone make you hairs stand up. My overall favorites but the whole book is marvel.
-Processes
- Cilo's poems (3)
-Tell Her Story
-Fugue With Two Crows
-Penance
-The Atrocity Book
-Dr. Beaumont
What impresses on first read is the constant connection between the personal realm and the universal. A family memory in “Evening – 1943” through the technology of shortwave radio intertwines the local with the backdrop of war. Surroundings, which include the “mantel and blue serpents of/gas fire in their white brick nest” become reflected in the father’s “rimless glasses.” Everything is connected, including Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a reference that bookends the memory with the opening and closing lines.
There is a power to Colby’s selection of allusions. They do not exist simply to show off the author’s superior intellect but to connect the person to their culture, the reader to their history, the poet to her tradition, and to breath something new into it.
In “Crazy Rain” the speaker connects the illusions we wrap around ourselves for a sense of security to changing feelings on faith and nature. There are no wasted words. Childhood is infused with “act(s) of contrition,” remembered “indulgences,” “guardian wings/of angels plucked/for your comforter.” Each attempt at self-preservation meets with the reality of rain, taking the path of least resistance, until Colby’s provides a dramatic epiphany, “What are you doing here/ expecting to be loved.” a phrase uttered as a statement, not a question. The poem is both questioning and a coming of age.
Each aspect of living becomes fair game, the event on the opposite side of the world that leaves a girl looking at a picture book reeling from its impact. “The Atrocity Book” shows a companion to the idea of witness poetry. While those who have borne the effects of atrocity have a need to speak, those who were not there but remain stunned by its aftermath have a need to speak back. Her recollection of a disfigured Jewish girl pulls empathy from the horrific, but in an unsentimental way, describing the young girls who encountered the picture, as “wondered, twitching/with excitement” and later “two cleavers/ of honed curiosity.”
In “Roadkill” the poet pulls the sublime again from the seeming insignificant and unattractive sight that many would pass over without reflection. A carcass treated as a nuisance first, then as “blacktop littered as if/figments of imagination.” Colby could leave this as a simple statement on our tendency to pass over the death of a creature, to not be inconvenienced by it. But she ties it to its importance, “the man . . . /seeing ducklings on the tollway,/Left his car running and rushed to their rescue. He was hit/Almost at once, then hit again.” In “Roadkill” it is not just two different mentalities toward small animals but different mentalities toward life itself. And an empathy not just toward small things, but a realization each is a twist of fortune or an act away from being on the other side of the coin.
The connections drawn by Joan Colby in her poetry make this a book worth reading multiple times.
By Allen Grey
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/827592430?book_show_action=true&page=1
By Donald Armfield
"Each story is a myth
In which someone discovers fire,
And the it all begins. "
This is collected works from previous published poetry collection of Joan Colby. After reading this I have a new book on my wishlist. "How The Sky Begins To Fall" and have a new favorite poet. Her writing style is amazing, weather you know what she is feeling or not. The words alone make you hairs stand up. My overall favorites but the whole book is marvel.
-Processes
- Cilo's poems (3)
-Tell Her Story
-Fugue With Two Crows
-Penance
-The Atrocity Book
-Dr. Beaumont
