Book Review: The Burn Poems (Lynn Strongin)Reviewed by Jill KhouryIn her latest book of verse, Lynn Strongin's narrator sends us missives from what feels like the edge of the world. This frontier aspect is both external—in one of the later poems, we learn that the speaker and her beloved have made their residence on the rugged territory of Vancouver Island—and internal. This unforgiving terrain can be all the more challenging to two ill women who face the obstacles of age and illness. From "All the panes be fogged over to pearl," the speaker tells us:
While the winter The lovers find romance in facing the storm together, as it were, and out of their romance, they made their home into a haven—nicknamed The Dollhouse in successive poems. It is easy to imagine, as a reader, a small cottage set into a wilderness in which, improbably, two people fashion a fairy tale refuge. Within the terrain of both natural landscape and romantic relationship, that which is fierce and unpredictable sits shoulder to shoulder with that which is tender and sacred. A reader gets the feeling that the paralyzed speaker feels both adoration and insecurity toward her lover, who travels for her work as a photographer. From "When children ran wheelchair races in a Special Olympics," we glean some of the lovers' origins. When the speaker first encounters the lover, "She had that shine of a crossroads / Where five rivers meet / … Lullaby, Glory." "She'd come on a ferryboat / & by train / & bus / alchemies of transport led her to my side / my supple-wristed / cross-laced / northern bride." However, "A reliquary evening for sure," gives us a glimpse of the speaker's simultaneous apprehension in the face of change—what I might venture to say is a nearly universal feeling in those who move within a world circumscribed by disability.
Nostalgia is an apron Despite being swathed in the comfort of the Dollhouse, the speaker reflects on how age and disability have changed her. Quarrels with her lover are sometimes profoundly unsettling. From "Recurrence," we get a glimpse of how one fight can seem like the end to all hope.
When frowns sweep off smiles Yet the lover, for all her wandering farther afield, is deeply admired. From "The dollhouse is at peace," the speaker luxuriates in "Peace in the dollhouse / After the wounds of war / My big braw [sic] girl goes out to straddle the world / I leap hurdles at home." These lines made me think especially of Dickinson, who from a restricted environment, absorbed every detail, and made these details a mirror for her delight and her torment. Strongin accomplishes something similar in The Burn Poems. In "Dutch Doors," the speaker lets us into her mind, continually churning with existential anxiety.
My waking slow, living in city in town so small . . . The echo is of course back to Roethke, "I wake to sleep and take my waking slow." Later in "The Waking," Roethke writes, "This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. / What falls away is always. And is near." Just as Roethke's speaker is determined to confront the difficulties brought on by aging, so is the speaker in The Burn Poems. "The storyline, its Kokab shaky as a one-year-old; / But it is my only way of doing things / A skipping boat calmly, right hand steady on the tiller / Thoughts in agitation," she tells us in "Tiger, you caught me by the tail." These are vignettes both arduous and gentle. At first the poems may prove difficult to enter. Strongin's use of varied line lengths and single-line stanzas force each line to do so much work that, at least in my opinion, this book is not best read straight through. Slow down and be patient with this work. You will be rewarded by the expert interweaving of themes and tropes that make this text a piece of magic, one that burns with yearning, fear, and persistence.
Title: The Burn Poems
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