small lucidities
Book four: random series
Copyright 2011 by Miriam E. Walsh
ardornata publishing
ISBN978093659839
142 pages, softbound, no price
Review by Zvi A. Sesling
This poetry book is the fourth in a series, the other, to be reviewed by other reviewers are entitled beautifully alien refraction, primitive awe and forced continuity. If the others are anything like this book they should be quite enthralling.
small lucidities has images one may not to read, as in “to breathe 07” in which you can find the following: today was a bad day/to breathe./I should have stopped/that last breath/and the one that came after/but my lungs demanded/and I acquiesced,/from habit.
Ms. Walsh’s images are not pleasant ones, the poems are not happy and a reader feels the Lucidity has been wherever the voice was institutionalized, but ah, there is not indication she ever was, though her bio states she was a health worker at a detox unit and held a number of other positions thus her poems in this volume at least were composed during lunch breaks, poetry readings, train and car rides. As you read this volume, and perhaps the other ones, you will feel that she is indeed prolific, profound and maybe even possessed. Most of the pages have two columns, indicating who directions, two thoughts, too much. Who knows.
Here are samples from two of the poems:
this deep 10: this deep,/this ache/is an ocean I swim under/ warm,/close/pressing/in every inch/a swaddling/that releases/me/from my obligation/to move
no more 08: a rage/I am trying/not to have,/a pain/I am condemned to;/I will be/no more
Some might be repulsed by the concepts behind the whole poem, but they work, they are enthralling, and to be honest makes one wonder whether Ms. Walsh worked in a detox center or was a patient there. Yet having said that, small lucidities has some big lucid thoughts and taken in small doses is a fascinating book (and a reminder there are three others I have not read). Give it a shot and see what you think.
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