Mark Tursi, Denver Quarterly (Vol 37, N0. 3, 2002)
"Confessional" and "highly personal" have become pejorative terms these days in most poetry circles. They are descriptions that conjure up either the deep despair of suicidal poets like Sylvia Plath or John Berryman, often in ways that are radically divorced from their actual poetry, or the egotistical teen-angst poems that fill the pages of high school literary magazines. However, this isn't the case when applied to Kathleen McGookey's first book, Whatever Shines, the next most recent book in the Marie Alexander Poetry Series. In fact, the notion of "the confessional" has taken on a new shine that lights up the numerous possibilities of writing from, what seems, a deeply personal impulse.
In "Tulip," the poet writes, "He had a certain unapproachable quality-do we seek in others what we lack? For a moment, I was unable to speak, even near water. The heart is in the middle, badly drawn and soggy. It's difficult to predict when I'll feel this generous again" (44). The hint of irony in the last line signals what eventually unfolds: the image of a brown wilted tulip that symbolizes an unsettling look at one kind of relationship that turns from seeming innocence to potential terror. In "View," she writes: "The unhappy bird in my chest won't stop flapping its wings. The way I see it is the way I see it. The bird's underfeathers are blue, just below plain brown, so I can't call it sparrow. How is the view from there? My heart was in my mother is another way to say I felt sick. . . Why should the body act like that?" (36). McGookey's imagery is densely packed and metaphorical, moving from tropes of birds and flight to images of light and brightness.
Most of the poems seem to emerge out of the author's own life and personal history, and have the feel of a writer discovering her own identity through the writing process, and particularly through speculating about the past. The poet makes an attempt to reconcile her personal, familial history with her current reality using evocative textual and imagistic memorabilia, such as her grandmother's 1935 journal and family photo albums. "In Line from a Journal," she begins exactly there-an epigraph from her grandmother's journal: "When I'm married, I expect to be thoroughly happy, making beds and washing dishes" 1191. Then, speculating about the actual sincerity of this, she writes: "I don't believe you meant that, but maybe you are happy" 1191, which is perhaps somewhat expected, but what follows is not. After quotidian images of the conventional homemaker, the poem slips into the scene of a car crash with the "you" of the poem, the observer, left to "bite your own cheek raw." The juxtaposition of safe, almost pastoral imagery, next to the car crash provides enough tension to cause us, as readers, to reconsider the epigraph and preceding lines with an eerie sort of recollection. And finally, at the end of the poem we are shoved back into more imagery that plays with the tension between being "caged" and searching for some kind of understanding:
At home, your dogs in their cages sniff and groan. You watch the jays and the lake and the flames. You bend over your cookbook, determined to poach an egg and set a table correctly. You write, and watch the moths fly to the light. (20)
All of the poems in the book, but particularly the ones centered on a journal entry or photographic image, convey a melancholic nostalgia that drawing from McGookey’s own imagery, is like a soft light or a gentle wind on the thoughts and bodies of the present: "Music drawn across the sky…/ The line believes itself: look, a life story./ Hands clasped, / a voice that will not leave or sing," (38). The past recollections and memories remain, but only as a muted voice or a faint light. The impact of the past, however, I not faded or inconsequential, but rather ironically, resonates so that the curiosity and conjectures about previous lives seep into the present in ways that shape and mold current reality and thought. For instance, in 'Picture of Radiance," the poet admits: "My own failings are far too evident: all day long I have wanted sleep and a letter, something brand-new and packaged. I must tell someone else's story" 1531. The past becomes a permanent "presence" and "present" in the lines of the poet and thoughts of the narrator.
McGookey's interest in the way the past and present overlap unfolds through simple images that attempt to resonate in complex ways. Sometimes this is precisely what takes place, and at other times, the images and language seem rather vapid and fall flat. In one poem, she writes, "I value forgetting urgency," which makes me wish she wouldn't forget so easily. In other words, there are moments in the text where I crave more immediacy, and perhaps, more pressure on the language to make it complex and challenging. Aligning herself within the long tradition of the American imagists, such as H.D., Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, as well as a somewhat confessional undertone like Robert Lowell, the poet draws from everyday life and day-to-day language. Whereas Williams's intent, in part, was to communicate to the world directly through the image and the poetry of everyday language, McGookey seems concerned with making a similar 'contact,' but one that bridges not only image to reality or poem to reader, but also, the present to the past. Like Williams's "radiant gists,' McGookey's poetry searches for "whatever shines." She writes: Everything can be a lesson, a way to live, though there are consequences: the single note of a bird, two notes really, and the answering bark of a dog. Some smile afterwards, price of the photo worth this alone... Disguise the daily routine: walk to school, if possible, in new shoes. Understand the bounds of money and weather, restrictions to live within. Empty snakeskin to show the children, delicate and crackly pocket of skin. (13)
As revealed in this passage, if "time" is McGookey's main obsession, then fragility is most definitely her intrigue. Evidenced in several poems, including three poems where a character drowns or nearly drowns, the poet is keenly aware of the fragility and transitory nature of human life. The poems seem like an attempt to remind us, the reader, as well as herself that this is the case. However, there is, as in Marcus, a hopeful "air" that seems to encourage us to remember and search for beauty and joy that does exist, as in "Near Drowning, Ihla Comprida, Brazil":
Evening comes so slowly it is mere discovery; small white flowers blossom in my spine. The market opens – so many times with just a little money, mouth open in front of shiny dead fish... I could hear the waves as we drove across kilometers of hard wet sand. We didn't die. We weren't even sure, looking back, what the danger was, but birds circle my balcony, and if anything, I feel I've finally done something right, something as simple as sitting quietly, alone at the end of the day. (41)
And, the poet has done something right with Whatever Shines. Although some of the poems border on being overly sentimental, the lyric impulse in the personal "I," contrasted with a vast array of strikingly vivid imagery that pushes against the past, the present and the future, creates exciting ways to enter new complexities regarding memory and reality.
These last two publications in the Marie Alexander Poetry Series clearly offer two very diverse manifestations of the prose poem. From the absurdist faux-parables of Marcus to the imagistic speculations and confessions of McGookey, one can see the versatility of this form and the ways it continues to evolve with skilled contemporary poets. These books, offered by White Pine Press, reveal the range of possibility within this definitive form, and contribute to ongoing debates and discussions regarding form and genre. Peter Johnson, in a past issue of Prose Poem International, suggested that the prose poem is experiencing a kind of renaissance. I think anyone who delves into the books offered by White Pine Press will certainly agree.