{"id":291,"date":"2014-11-06T00:24:06","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T05:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=291"},"modified":"2014-11-06T00:24:06","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T05:24:06","slug":"review-of-after-the-tornado-by-diane-hueter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=291","title":{"rendered":"Review of After the Tornado by Diane Hueter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hueter<\/a>Diane Hueter. After the Tornado. <\/em>Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013. 87 pgs. $16.00<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

After the Tornado<\/em> by Diane Hueter is the most character driven collection of poetry I\u2019ve read in quite some time. Individually, the poems are (apparently) autobiographical lyrics exploring family and landscape\u2014and the effect of landscape on family. Some members of the family appear in poem after poem, however, so the cumulative effect is\u2014not exactly a story\u2014but a presentation of atmosphere that suggests story. While the collection itself illustrates a narrative impulse, the individual poems vary sufficiently in style to keep the reader engaged and even occasionally surprised.<\/p>\n

In \u201cDigging Clams at Sequim Bay,\u201d the speaker visits her childhood coastal home, recalling both the childhood and the occasions she took her own children to visit. But her memory is imprecise; she remembers her longing more intensely than she remembers the individuals who accompanied her:<\/p>\n

Did I stand there with Josie
\nBalanced on my hip?
\nOr was it Erin, years later?
\nSomeone whimpered over the cold
\nThe sand
\nThe wind<\/p>\n

I watched the houses across the iron bay
\nTo see if anyone came out
\nPaused at the shore
\nOr got in a boat to chug away.
\nNo one did.<\/p>\n

Through the light fog
\nThe houses, red and white toys,
\nLay scattered along the bank.
\nI waited for the fisherman
\nOr his wife
\nTo stand waving from the headland
\nA miniature lighthouse
\nA beacon to the farther shore.<\/p>\n

This center section of the poem is disconcerting not simply because the speaker can\u2019t remember which child she held at the moment of this memory, but also because the speaker herself seems so alone in a desolate landscape. In another context, the \u201clight fog\u201d could become almost romantic, as slightly out-of-focus photographs can seem romanticized, but here, in the cold at the \u201ciron bay,\u201d the fog serves only to separate, to conceal. No one emerges from the houses; no one offers acknowledgment; no one serves as guide. Within the next several stanzas, the speaker recalls generalized experiences, those that occurred over and over again through each summer, until they seem like one extended memory. Finally, in the last stanza, she decides, \u201cIt must have been the summer we felt \/ Death hovering in the fog.\u201d But even this understanding does not clarify her earlier confusion. The poem ends with this question: \u201cWhich damn child whispers into the sleeve of my coat \/ I\u2019m cold, I\u2019m cold, I\u2019m cold?\u201d The intensity of the emotion\u2014\u201cWhich damn child\u201d\u2014suggests that the speaker is unusually invested in this memory. Readers, of course, understand that the cold whispering child may be neither Josie nor Erin, but the speaker herself waiting yet, her own childhood superimposed upon her children\u2019s, comfortless still.<\/p>\n

A poem with a similar but more ominous mood occurs close to the end of the collection. In \u201cIcicles\u201d a character identified only as \u201cshe\u201d receives a phone call from her father announcing that a third character, \u201cyou,\u201d has died. Similarly to \u201cDigging Clams at Sequim Bay,\u201d \u201cIcicles\u201d opens in darkness, cold, and isolation: \u201cShe stood in the chilled and darkened room \/ because the only telephone was in a room \/ shut off each year against the cold.\u201d The woman listens to her father deliver his news, unsurprised at its content though startled by her own eventual reaction:<\/p>\n

But it was the season they lost the pup to coyotes,
\nand the neighbor\u2019s dog slaughtered all their chickens
\nwhen they were at work.
\nThe winter they marveled at water spilled from a jug.
\nThe time it froze as it hit the cooking pot\u2014
\nthen froze in the jug, too.<\/p>\n

So it was winter when she learned of your death.<\/p>\n

Images follow, of winter details, of ice\u2014both so beautiful and so dangerous. Her father wouldn\u2019t understand that for some people, including his daughter, this death might be good news. \u201cYou\u201d is not someone she plans to mourn. The poem itself doesn\u2019t reveal why the woman responds as she does, only that<\/p>\n

for a moment, she was ready suddenly to say
\nas if it poured from her like water\u2014<\/p>\n

Good
\nGood I\u2019m glad<\/em><\/p>\n

But she stopped,
\nbecause it hurt so much she couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n

\u201cIcicles\u201d is one of the few poems in the collection not narrated in the first person, though it\u2019s reasonable to assume a relationship between the \u201cshe\u201d in this poem and the \u201cI\u201d in many of the others. Read in the context of the entire collection, \u201cIcicles\u201d gains meaning, similarly to how individual stories within collections of linked short stories acquire significance through their context. I won\u2019t reveal here the interpretation other poems in After the Tornado <\/em>suggest; instead, I will only compliment Hueter on her restraint. The poem is as effective as it is because readers can sense the effort at self-control the news demands of the woman.<\/p>\n

At first glance, After the Tornado <\/em>seems to be about the hardships of life on an unforgiving land. It seems to be about natural disaster. And it is about these things. More significantly though, the poems address personal disaster, as Hueter takes up the task of describing\u2014through figurative language because literal language is insufficient\u2014the effects of such disasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diane Hueter. After the Tornado. Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013. 87 pgs. $16.00 Reviewed by Lynn Domina After the Tornado by Diane Hueter is the most character driven collection of poetry I\u2019ve read in quite some time. Individually, the poems are (apparently) autobiographical lyrics exploring family and landscape\u2014and the effect of landscape on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}