|
 These are ordinary days, and ordinary
recollections, make extraordinary by the power of
Howard-Johnson’s observation and the tension between
sensation and hindsight. Peppered with imagery that is heady
and evocative, this is poetry both historical and
psychological.
Reviewed by Magdalena Ball, reviewer for Midwest Review
Tracings
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Finishing Line Press
$12, paper, October 2005
Tracings
is a relatively small collection of poems--only 29 in total,
but the impact belies its size. Carolyn Howard-Johnson has
chosen well, producing a quiet and evocative collection
which goes deep under the surface of everyday life and
recollection to muse on such subjects as life, death, love,
and loss. At first glance the poetry seems light, but the
moment’s respite--a wild holly hock or dead insect on the
carpet, becomes a melancholy epiphany, looking coolly into
the fragile, tenacious nature of life:
Tracings. Echoes. Deeds done
and undone, transformed
existence, loved ones here and gone. (“An Apparition”)
The poems are heavily rooted in place and time, from the
claustrophobia of Utah in the 1940s to the lonely airspace
of a flight between Utah and Los Angeles. These are ordinary
days, and ordinary recollections, make extraordinary by the
power of Howard-Johnson’s observation and the tension
between sensation and hindsight. Peppered with imagery that
is heady and evocative, the poetry is both historical and
psychological. Howard Johnson conjures Utah during World War
Two from a child‘s perspective, uniting the dark “velvet“
night with the loss of a father, an air raid siren, a *****
cap, grosgrain ribbons and the smell of gabardine. The
impact is immediate:
Oh, nothing, an air raid
my mother answers
as if her words were lyrics
she wanted to forget.
Would the lights return
charged with that sound that split
my father’s hand from mine. (“Earliest Remembered Sound”)
Most of the poetry tends towards the iconic, full of
American symbols like Wonderbread, Lux, Barbasol, Kerr
canning jars, Keds, Barbie, Guess jeans, Chevrolet,
Hershey’s Kisses, Jell-o, or a 1940s Fostoria Bowl, each
evoking a certain time and place, and lending a concrete
visual image in the midst of introspection. The landscape is
deftly portrayed through a child’s eye, from the impact of
war on a child left behind, or the helplessness of a child
facing a lie about her parents’ divorce. The poetry manages
to be simultaneously immediate and distanced, as if we were
in the mind or heart of an older, wiser observer, at the
same time as we are experiencing the moment firsthand. It is
an eerie combination of voyeur and participant, as we watch
an older man and younger woman come together in “From the
Observation Deck,” or LA burn in “Faith in LA”:
Peaks protrude through
an undulating mix of cloud and smoke
and I, even knowing my home may be
charred timbers, see how lovely, lovely
this masked inferno is.
There is melancholy, but also a kind of muted joy, in
revisiting places, people, and times now gone. The past is a
series of sensations, images in a snapshot (“Portraits and
Poses”), or sensory impressions, which in a Proustian way,
reveal themselves only with distance. The landscape of
youth, lost innocence and beauty is mourned, but at the same
time, there is pride in wisdom and age, and the development
of a new kind of beauty:
Our observations are
time congealed; we believe our
bent perceptions, that an event begins and
ends, that time separates one from another.
I reason (if I can trust my reason still)
that my metaphors, squashed like putty,
pulled like taffy, piled line on line
in a mixing dish, transparent or not,
are clear and real today and yesterday
if only because I thought
of them that way. (“Poetry, Quantum Mechanics and Other
Trifles“)
Tracings
is a warm and wonderful collection of poems. None of the
poems are overtly ornate or rhetorical, and however
melancholy the memory. Howard-Johnson resists the urge
towards sentimentality. The poetry is always slouching
towards the bigger meaning, turning the micro perspective of
the moment into the broader macro perspective of the
poet-god. The poems are immediately accessible and will
appeal to readers from all backgrounds, but their simplicity
belies the fact that these are profound pieces, worthy of
re-readings.
|
