Who do we call in
times of trouble? Our creator or our mother; our best friend or spouse? After we choose, then what words do we
use to call? In her new poetry
collection from Iris Press, Cathy Smith Bowers uses both sacred and secular
language, common and explicative terms, to articulate the complexity of human
living.
A seasoned Bowers
reader recognizes the love of language-play as characteristic from her
publishing history: since her
first book, The Love That Ended Yesterday
in Texas, Bowers has enjoyed praise for her diction. Her last collection, The Book of Minutes (Iris Press, 2004),
largely experiments with a short poetic form called the minute. But, in The Candle I Hold Up to See You Bowers returns to variety in form
–in free verse, loose couplets and quatrains, in longer and more brief poems–
and turns her concentration more fully again to individual words. Each section
of the book leans into her purpose, advertising with a select vocabulary: rhetoric, lexicon, and “Syntax Symbol
Diction.” The poems of the book
brim with letters and instructions and lessons and captions and utterings.
“How it can turn on
you,” the poet remarks in “Language: A Sentimental Education” as the poem rolls through a loose metathesis
with the words “poked,” “boll-weevil,” and “pencil” to tell of the elementary
classroom trauma and the embarrassment felt
as I lifted my shirt
for her to see,
the whorls of my
primordial wound
reddening where his eraser
had gone.
By the end of the
poem, the word “god” disappears from “Good dog.” Other poems in the same section of the book explore the
meaning and origin of words like “frog,” abattoir,
“sane” and “health.” These
experiments elucidate concepts both naïve and grave. Bowers newly defines other words, like “slut” and “family”
and “despise,” found in the section An
American Family, to show the nuance involved in a simple slur, a
traditional concept, and an active verb.
The poet calls out
to God in the first eight poems of the book, using notarikon, the rearranging of
Hebrew letters, yet leaves the reader without a pronounceable name. Referencing
Rabbi Yehuda Berg, Bowers takes the first eight of
the 72 permutations from Kabbalah, to illustrate
various aspects of God: the
miracle-worker, the creator, healer, are evoked, alongside Lizzie Borden, Emily
Dickinson, Mary of Medjujorge, and Ora Snipes, the neighbor who scared the children on
Halloween night.
As she reported over the phone in late June, Bowers, when
writing those first eight poems, intended to construct her own book, in poetry,
regarding the 72 names of God; “but, then I decided
that God had too many names!” Yet
in a way, the last eight poems of the book call out to the underworld, first
addressing the god of that world who has been freshly stripped of the title of
planet. Poems for Kate Berryman,
Nick Flynn, Maxine Kumin compare details of suicides
and ask after those left in the wake of death.
“Solace” and “Whistle-Speak”
use a flute and hand-call to reach across space and time to bring comfort and
connection, to perhaps save the caller, or
Find, in a crowd,
the husband
You’ve somehow
lost.
Professing her philosophy, Bowers says
that “our major task in writing a poem is to shine a light on a moment
of intensity.” The lights in this
collection – 33 candles, so to speak – illuminate the dark
mysteries of family and God and personal journey and, most importantly, death
and life-after-death, making a progression out of darkness— a journey past
adolescence into maturity. Bowers’s experimentation in language helps us define our
relationships and sentiments, with words, with people and with God. Additionally, the collection reminds
the reader of the value of questioning—or calling out—to make sense
of the world: it reminds the
reader that “the burning” is what matters – the questioning and wondering
and figuring matters most when we work to really make sense of darkness. It is the candle we hold up to see.
Books by Cathy Smith Bowers: The Candle I
Hold Up to See You - Iris Press,
2009 | A Book of Minutes - Iris Press, 2009 | and Traveling in Time
of Danger - Iris Press, 1999 | The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas – Iris Press, 1998
