Over the holidays I discovered the poetry of Carol Lynn Pearson, which I have been enjoying. At times she spills over into the trite or saccharine, but on the whole I like it. There is nothing agonistic about it, which is the reason that Terryl Givens doesn’t much care for it. I think that he’s right, however, that by taking Emily Dickinson (another poetess I’ve recently started reading) as her model, the conciseness of her style frequently rescues her from smugness. At its best, there is an engaging naivete in her verse, a kind of simple purity that skates at the edge of being simplistic but manages not to be. At times there are even surprises. Consider this:<\/p>\n
ANOTHER BIRTH<\/p>\n
I did not bring
\nThe anticipation
\nOf birth —
\nOf forging my spirit
\nWith flesh.<\/p>\nAs the moment
\nNeared,
\nI think
\nI held my breath
\n(If spirits breathe)
\nAnd made a
\nReverent plunge
\nInto embodiment,
\nMortality.<\/p>\nYes —
\nEven unremembering
\nI know the
\nWonderment,
\nThe awe.
\nFor I stand staring
\nAt another birth
\nThat swells my heart
\nWith the hugeness
\nOf beginnings.
\nIn a moment
\nI am born as wife —
\nGiven another body
\nAnd another life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAs I began reading this poem, I thought that it would be about childbirth. Its structure looked predictable to me, telling the story of birth from both sides of the veil. Then in the final lines I learn that the birth is not of a child but of a marriage. The forging of spirit with flesh of the first lines is given a conjugal meaning in the final lines as the speaker gets another body. For me at any rate, the poem has a twist at the end. Along the way, it manages to pack in the images in Dickinson fashion. The plunge of the middle section, for example, calls forth images of diving into water, baptism, and even the water of birth. Finally, there is a wonderful Mormon sensibility about the whole poem. For me this shows up less in the theme of pre-existence per se, than in the parenthetical “(If spirits breath)”. There is a literalness in that phrase that recalls angels delivering plates and Joseph’s instructions on how to test for angels or Satanic spirits. Likewise, I can’t help but reading the imagery of spirits, bodies, and forging as covertly sexual, but a sexuality embedded in a religious enthusiasm for the physical.<\/p>\n
On the whole, Pearson is not a deep well to which I see myself returning again and again, like Milton or Wordsworth. She, is however, at her best a well-tended flower garden.<\/p>\n