{"id":296,"date":"2014-11-24T23:00:51","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T04:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=296"},"modified":"2014-11-25T16:43:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T21:43:47","slug":"review-of-keeper-by-kacey-jueds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=296","title":{"rendered":"Review of Keeper by Kasey Jueds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jueds<\/a><\/strong>Kasey Jueds. Keeper. <\/em>University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. 78 pgs. $15.95.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Kasey Jueds\u2019 Keeper <\/em>is filled with poems that have stuck with me, and only now am I fully understanding why. Most of the poems are image-driven lyrics, but the speaker\u2019s presence is often muted, even when she enters the poem as \u201cI\u201d or, less often, \u201cyou.\u201d The poems are thoughtful, as if the material continues to turn in the speaker\u2019s mind, as if meaning emerges like light tilting against a holograph. Although each image blends logically into the next, we often end up quite far from where we began. This is how poetry ought to work, through reliance on the concrete, the work of comprehension transpiring in the reader\u2019s mind, the poet providing all that is necessary and nothing that is not necessary for comprehension.<\/p>\n

The opening poem in the collection, \u201cBats,\u201d serves as prologue and illustrates how the poem develops through associative links among its images. The first and second stanzas describe that recognizable yet confusing experience\u2014waking to the soft motion of swooping bats. Then the poem shifts toward the mystical, challenging us (or at least those of us, like me, whose dread of bats is nearly unspeakable) to perceive these creatures differently:<\/p>\n

First dark, then more dark
\nsmoothed down over it.<\/p>\n

First sleep, then eyes
\nopen to the ceiling
\nwhere something circles. For a moment,
\nyou can\u2019t name it. And for a moment<\/p>\n

you\u2019re not afraid. Remember<\/p>\n

Blake\u2019s angels, how they leaned
\ntoward each other, and balanced
\nby touching only the tips of their wings?
\nBetween their bodies, a space<\/p>\n

like the one just after rain begins, when rain
\nisn\u2019t rain, but the smell
\nof dust lifted, something silent and clean.<\/p>\n

The syntactic repetition in the first two stanzas is inviting, even comforting. \u201cFirst dark, then\u201d leads to \u201cFirst sleep, then\u201d\u2014though the second occurrence becomes eventually startling. We can recall a bat\u2019s distinct darkness against night\u2019s darkness, and against the darkness of sleep. And we can recall the moment between noticing and naming. Here is where Jueds\u2019 skill with lineation is most evident: For a moment, \/ you can\u2019t name it. And for a moment \/\/ you\u2019re not afraid. Remember\u2026\u201d The lines break at \u201cmoment,\u201d extending that moment for the reader. Line seven serves as the fulcrum upon which the poem balances, a single-line stanza that reads as a reminder to be not afraid. But \u201cRemember,\u201d of course, carries the poem over its turn, the speaker describing Blake\u2019s angels so that we seem to remember them even if we\u2019ve never seen them. The angels balance themselves somehow because they hover above empty space\u2014or space that is filled with meaning rather than with material structures. A thing becomes itself through time apparently, for during the immediately preceding moment, \u201crain \/ isn\u2019t rain.\u201d Rain is what will be, and space is filled with understanding of what will be. Jueds describes rain plausibly as \u201csomething silent and clean,\u201d and if we\u2019ve been reading attentively and receptively, we\u2019re now willing to consider the bats as angels balanced on the tips of their wings, as things \u201csilent and clean.\u201d We might resist such an suggestion almost reflexively, until we remember the poem\u2019s central caution: \u201cyou\u2019re not afraid. Remember.\u201d I appreciate the suggestiveness of this poem, not so much in its identification of bats with angels, for that identification relies on the clear logic of analogy, but with the next leap, the association of these flying fearsome creatures with the cleansing precision of rain.<\/p>\n

A poem I particularly like is \u201cStratus clouds form\u201d which opens the second section of the collection. The title leads into the first sentence, which is itself unusual in its syntax. The first part of the sentence consists of three clauses, one subordinate, all balanced on that most common of coordinating conjunctions, \u201cand.\u201d But the clauses on either side of the \u201cand\u201d are not balanced in their meaning as we might expect; that is, the meaning of the sentence veers toward a new direction at the \u201cand.\u201d \u201cAnd\u201d often signals only accumulation, so readers relax their attention. Here, we\u2019re surprised at the shift, and we\u2019re surprised in part because the syntax minimizes any expectation of surprise. Here is the poem:<\/p>\n

Stratus clouds form<\/p>\n

when a layer of air is cooled
\nto the saturation point, and today
\nI want to call it kindness:
\nlike lilacs permitting us their scent
\njust sometimes, off to one side
\nof the entire, rain-shined bush,
\nmountains keep to themselves
\nbehind gray, thinking we can\u2019t hold
\nall of this at once. In Siena
\nI saw a leafless tree, covered
\nin oranges, and St. Catherine\u2019s head
\npreserved behind glass in the church,
\nas if too much wholeness
\ncould be too much. Then last winter I forgot
\nabout daffodils, and felt so surprised
\nwhen they returned, yellow all the way through
\nlike a ball of wool that, even behind
\na closet door, contains the baby\u2019s blanket
\nwholly in its globe, and waits
\nfor our hands to begin.<\/p>\n

The poem begins factually, and the fact is interesting in itself, but the poem then shifts to the undeniably subjective: \u201cI want to call it kindness.\u201d The poem moves through several figurative turns, including some startling visual images. The \u201cleafless tree, covered in oranges\u201d startles us with brilliant color, and then the head of St. Catherine startles us differently\u2014after these references to nature, we aren\u2019t expecting the macabre. But Jueds doesn\u2019t include this detail as a gratuitous shock; it, too, illustrates the \u201ckindness\u201d the universe extends to human beings. We are limited creatures, intellectually and emotionally as well as physically. Yet the kindness the universe extends also implies fulfillment: water vapor contains the cloud even before the air is cooled; the head suggests the body even when severed from it; and finally, the ball of yarn contains the blanket the hands will knit. Most crucial to this final image, of course, is the requirement of human participation.<\/p>\n

Having read this book, I find myself thinking differently. These are poems of quiet revelation. They show me a mind thinking, in images and through metaphor, turning an idea over and then over again. Reading Jueds\u2019 work feels like walking around a large scuplture, noticing how it seems to move of its own accord, responding to our angle of vision. I won\u2019t say I\u2019m looking forward to her next book, not yet, because Keeper <\/em>provides me with enough to mull over until that next book arrives.<\/p>\n

————————————————-<\/p>\n

Regular readers of this blog will note that Kacey Jueds has contributed a couple of guest reviews. In the interest of full disclosure, I want to state that my relationship with her is limited to correspondence regarding those reviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kasey Jueds. Keeper. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. 78 pgs. $15.95. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Kasey Jueds\u2019 Keeper is filled with poems that have stuck with me, and only now am I fully understanding why. Most of the poems are image-driven lyrics, but the speaker\u2019s presence is […]<\/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-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","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=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}