Books received today:  Douglas Valentine, With Our Eyes Wide Open:  Poems of the New American Century (West End Press).

Review:

Heather Burns, Between Career and Caution (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011)


There is something about the small chapbook form which brings to the poetry reader a little extra-an additional narrative arc often (well, usually) lost in the longer collections. The conversations between the poems, and the larger conversation of the collection, season and bring out additional flavors that make collections like Burns' effort a real treat, and continue to make the chapbook my preferred poetry vessel.

One of the strong threads throughout her work is the outside; I don't mean outsider(s) but physically outside the home. There are few navel-gazing moments in this collection, and much of her poetry has a sense of proprioceptive interplay that at times become play, but most times define the boundaries of the interaction in a way which invites us within those borders. "A Made Play" for example is nothing but a girl's outside play, with snapshots that feel as though they could be pulled from a much, much longer scrapbook without losing their focus or intent, and has an ending optimistic note that is startling because it is both rare in Burns' poems, and is pulled off effortlessly:

She is green inside,
Springy like clean crisp grass,
Shimmies the trunk of the skeleton tree
And hangs a picture on the sky.

Even when the outside doesn't seem to be involved, it sticks its head in, as in "Work" when Burns writes of the intrusion of fake flowers in her otherwise-colorless day, even though

I was tricked
The sky was wormy
And wintry still.

One could read this book as a narrative on geography, or perhaps just place in space. But the careful interplay between the poems would be lost in such a basic reading, and that is where Burns' volume rises above where it otherwise might have stayed. And while the poems nearly always maintain a carefully-maintained emotional resonance, there is an undercurrent of what I can only describe as glory, or joy, that seems to drive these poems out of Burns despite what might otherwise appear on the page. These are not religious or even spiritual poems (even "Matins" or "An Idea About Angels" are as reality-based as any other in the collection) but there is clearly a tension on the page, guiding the words while maintaining the poetic structure.

These are carefully crafted poems which deserve a wider reading. And it is my hope that Burns will continue to allow that muse within her (which I called "joy" or "glory" but might just as well simply be called "faith") to continue to work through that poetic tension which appears to be her creative engine. I look forward to following that train.