The Undressing by Li-Young Lee
“And I don’t know
what might bring peace on earth. But a man
fallen asleep at his desk while revising
a letter…”
“And I don’t know
what might bring peace on earth. But a man
fallen asleep at his desk while revising
a letter to his father is apple blossoms
left lying where they fell.
The son who comes to wake him by kissing
the crown of his head is so many things:
Love succeeding.
The eye of the needle.
Little voice calling the flowers to assembly.”
In the Field Between Us by Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
I’ve never read a collection of poems that so saliently addresses a life lived with a disability, in the shadows of medical intervention both the ones that linger behind you and the ones that are cast ahead of you, and how the scared body in pain exists in this beautiful and terrifying world. I cried over my coffee more than once as I read these intimate letters between Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison because I found echoed there my experiences, for the first time in literature not found in an obscure medical study found in the Google rabbit hole after a night of pain keeps me awake and wondering why and how I got there and if I am alone with it. I’m not. I have these overheard conversations, like clues toward an answer.
Again and again, came to mind the image of sea glass. Broken, ragged, sharp, raw, but through the tumble of waves something beautiful, smoothed, a story in its own right. These poems were the waves, I am the broken bit of glass from a bottle.
Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis
At any point while I am reading (always in my home these days) there is most certainly a basket of clean laundry within reach waiting to be folded and put away, a cup of coffee going cold, an old water cup nobody will claim and take care of, and classical music rasping from the old radio, a sound that has been the backdrop of my life for as long as I can remember and is now the backdrop to my children’s lives.
Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis is a study in what bruises we bring to love. A study in how we stumble forward trying to gain our footing, sometimes falling all the same, but always, it seems, with a nearby hand outstretched, helping us to our feet. This book is a study in grace and tenderness, grown in the shadow of pain and grief—for where else can grace and tenderness grow?
It is an honor to be invited into the intimacy of these poems.
