Book Review: Steeplechase (Jill Stein)Reviewed by Linda CroninJill Stein's latest chapbook Steeplechase has been published by Main Street Rag as part of their Author's Choice Chapbook Series. Stein's bio reveals that she is a psychotherapist and has been dealing with increasing mobility problems due to multiple sclerosis for the past 10 years. As a poet with a disability myself and a staff member of two journals dedicated to disability literature, I am always on the lookout for new writing that explores issues from a disabilities perspective. However, as I delved into the poems, I was disappointed that the majority of Stein's recent chapbook do not deal directly with her disability. Instead, her poems focus on her relationships with family and her role as mother, wife, and daughter. Some poems center on her parents aging and her mother's descent into the fog of Alzheimer's. Stein writes in a direct and unsparing voice that never asks for pity, yet I felt the poems would have been strengthened if she had revealed more of how the relationships and her view of her mother and father's aging was influenced by her living with a chronic illness and disability. In "Steeplechase," the title poem of the collection Stein uses the powerful title metaphor to display the confusion and the continual bombardment we often feel life is throwing at us and that few guideposts that exists to help us through. She writes "I'm tearing down the giant slide so fast/I don't feel the burn/until I see blisters on my thighs." (8). This feeling is familiar to many people whether or not they are dealing with a disability but sometimes those of us who do have a disability feel we have that many more things bombarding us. There are a few poems in Steeplechase in which Stein directly addresses what is like for her living with MS, a progressively debilitating condition. In "The Body's Mutinies," perhaps my favorite poem of the collection that does mention her disability, Stein describes her craving for sleep and her reluctance come morning to return to consciousness. She writes of the freedom she finds in sleep when she says "I am soaring back/before the labor of my heavy legs began." (27). Many people recognize and identify with that feeling of moving through dreams without the constraints of their disability. While in "After My Husband Breaks His Ankle" Stein writes of her husband's shock of finding himself restrained by his broken ankle. She knows that she has "made a better peace/with this long crippled body than he has." (33). She speaks of the coming to terms with a disability that everyone must go through to go on with life. She writes "I can't remember back to/slicing through the world with my steps." (33). Earlier in the poem she says she has "made me used to the small places of my life," (33). but still she remains optimistic saying "surely spring must come/and all this whiteness cease." (34) and in the final poem of the collection, "Amelia Island," Stein writes how she must learn to
thread myself across The majority of the poems in Steeplechase, however, never mention disability. Instead, they focus on Stein's relationship with her children, her husband, her parents. Several poems are in the voice of Stein as a child and display the innocence of a child who thinks her father "still had the power to the erase all sorrows" ("When I Was Six, My Father Had the Power" 7). In the voice of a child in "Montgomery Street," Stein is certain that nothing bad will ever happen to her – an attitude that would become more poignant if it had been considered through her future disability and her parents aging and her mother's Alzheimer's. Other poems deal with her children's childhood and a growing independence from her. Stein describes her children's struggle for power and popularity in such poems as "Unicorns" and "Dog" and the comfort of being part of a group as she describes the children a
as they breathed together, She demonstrates their growing independence in "Small Circles." The children are busy doing their own thing. She says "But they ignore us –/they are busy drilling holes" (15). But the reader never sees how her children's childhood was influenced by her growing disability, an issue I wish Stein as a parent who understands what it is like to be disabled had addressed. Stein has a very straight forward and unsentimental voice that could have been a strong addition to the body of work that exists by parents with disabilities. The author also describes a relationship with her husband as they both begin to age into midlife. In the poem entitled "Mid-life," Stein writes of the struggle to find a balance between caring for her children and her parents and yet still cope with her own aging. She describes her parents growing dependence and her mother's loosening hold on reality while her father "hopes only for more shelf space." (19). And in the end she realizes
they are already broken. The poems dealing with her parents aging and her mother's gradual descent into Alzheimer's are some of the strongest poems of the collection. They are ones that will make the reader take note and for many a person who is in the same or similar position may find comfort in understanding that they are not alone. "My Father Refuses to Have a Funeral" describes the difficulty of some of the conversations that take place as parents begin to age and the struggle to know what to do. She writes of "watching my mother try/to eat the yellow chrysanthemums I brought" (22). She speaks of the struggle of knowing when enough is enough, calling her father "a death enthusiasts of sorts –" and of her mother telling her not to let her husband pull the plug too soon, yet the daughter can help but wonder what
she'd choose if Again in "Clapping," Stein discusses her mother's new habit of tapping on an arm of the chair clapping her hands as the mothers way of communicating that Stein struggles to understand when "she glances up to give you/that same look… As if surely you know/exactly what she means." (25) As I read the poems that dealt with her parents aging and her mother struggle with Alzheimer's, I found myself wishing that Stein had described the issues more from the perspective of someone who is aging herself and dealing with a rapidly progressively decaying body. While there are many similarities that can exist between aging and disability when it comes to Alzheimer's and physical disability there are some distinct differences. Stein's body is decaying physically while her mother's body and mind is decaying mentally at the same time as it ages physically. I would have been interested in seeing Stein's thoughts as she compared and contrasted these issues, and I do think it would've been a real contribution to the literature that exists from writers with disabilities. Stein has previously received three New Jersey State Council on the Arts grants for poetry and her previous chapbook, Cautionary Tales, published by Finishing Line Press. Overall, Steeplechase presents a strong collection and can be of value to many readers. But when it comes to Stein's work and its role in the body of literature by people with disabilities, I think a real opportunity was missed and I only hope Stein will consider addressing that in her future work.
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