{"id":347,"date":"2015-08-09T21:59:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T01:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2015-08-09T22:09:06","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T02:09:06","slug":"review-of-i-watched-you-disappear-by-anya-krugovoy-silver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"Review of I Watched You Disappear by Anya Krugovoy Silver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Silver<\/a>Anya Krugovoy Silver. I Watched You Disappear. <\/em>Louisiana State University Press, 2014. 73 pgs. $17.95.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Like many readers, I found Anya Krugovoy Silver\u2019s first collection, The Ninety-Third Name of God, <\/em>published in 2010, absolutely stunning. I waited impatiently for her next collection, I Watched You Disappear, <\/em>and eagerly read it when it was published a few months ago. The two books share several themes, especially the speaker\u2019s relationship with God and the effects of living with cancer. I Watched You Disappear <\/em>is the more somber of the two, as the speaker\u2019s community seems to absorb one death after another, and it more predominantly focuses on death and grief. This collection is more emotionally difficult because of death\u2019s relentless hovering and so harder to read straight through, but the poems are just as accomplished and memorable as the ones in Silver\u2019s first collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cNight Prayer,\u201d the second poem in the collection, is stylistically representative of many of the poems in the book. At fourteen lines, it gestures toward the sonnet, with some iambic stretches in the lines though no absolute iambic pentameter, and with some near rhyme though no pattern of true rhyme. If there is a turn in this poem, it is slight and occurs after line ten, or maybe even line twelve, rather than following an octave. Still, the poem takes prayer as its subject, something that can be turned over and examined from multiple angles, relying on imagery and metaphor rather than narrative to drive it forward, and it concludes with a couplet (though the poem is arranged as one stanza) that clicks closed with the finality common to sonnets. Many of the lines seem to question not only the efficacy of prayer but also the existence of an always apparently silent audience. The poem opens this way:<\/p>\n

I talk and talk and hear nothing back.
\nYou who are neither voice, nor sign,
\nnor image. In answer to my pleas,
\nnot the slightest flutter of humid air
\nor pause in cicadas\u2019 raspy vespers.<\/p>\n

According to this poem, prayer is what makes nothing happen. Not only does God fail to respond, but the speaker\u2019s environment is so uniform from one minute to the next that she can\u2019t interpret any event as a sign even if she\u2019s determined to.<\/p>\n

If nothing happens around the speaker, however, something does happen within the poem. The first line begins iambically, and it contains the near rhyme (or at least a sonic reference) of \u201ctalk\u201d and \u201cback.\u201d With seven of its eight words being monosyllabic, this line sounds insistent, and the insistence carries into the first half of the next line. By sentence three, however, beginning in line three and carrying through line five, the pace slows, with softer sounds and substantially fewer monosyllables. Rather than the hard sound of \u201ck\u201d repeated three times, line five renders its meaning through the thrice-repeated \u201cp.\u201d Because Silver has slowed the pace, the reader becomes prepared for a more reflective consideration of the speaker\u2019s experience, as eventually occurs. The next lines reproduce some of the sounds we notice in lines four and five:<\/p>\n

No stutter of starlight, no pillow
\nslipped beneath my knees or swallow-
\ntail alighting on my waiting hands.<\/p>\n

Line six develops through true alliteration\u2014\u201cstutter of starlight\u201d\u2014and moves into the closest example of true rhyme in the poem, \u201cpillow\u201d and \u201cswallow.\u201d In addition, \u201cslipped\u201d extends this section of the poem\u2019s reliance on \u201cp\u201d and \u201cl\u201d to maintain the slower rhythm. In terms of content, the imagery reinforces the statements in lines one through three suggesting God\u2019s absence. Because of its mastery of craft, the poem has been pleasurable to read throughout, but the final two lines provide the most satisfying surprise. I, at least, was expecting some sort of resignation if not outright anger from the speaker, but instead she closes with an acceptance that reminds us, through image as well as denotation, of her connection to God:<\/p>\n

And what I speak remains traceless\u2014
\nlike a beetle\u2019s breath, this Amen.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The speaker\u2019s words leave as little evidence of their existence as the God whom the poem addresses, and in this way the speaker resembles her audience; she is an \u201cimage\u201d that was called absent in line three. Her last word, \u201cAmen,\u201d concluding the prayer, reinforces the speaker\u2019s status as creature rather than would-be creator, as understanding and accepting her identity in terms of the divine.<\/p>\n

A poem toward the end of the collection, \u201cPortraits in the Country,\u201d adopts a similar strategy at its conclusion. Several of the poems in this last section of the book are ekphrastic, and Silver provides an identification here: \u201cGustave Caillebotte, 1876.\u201d The poem responds to Caillebotte\u2019s painting, Portraits \u00e0 la Campagne<\/a><\/span>, in which four women relax in a park, doing needlework or reading. The speaker associates herself with them as she proceeds through time without the hurry or rush or busyness so characteristic of our era. Instead, she says,<\/p>\n

I am shutting my ears to the hours,
\nto the bell tower\u2019s quarterly reminder
\nthat I should be doing something useful.<\/p>\n

Usefulness can be valuable, but it does not constitute the total meaning of our lives. This speaker chooses attentiveness and meditation:<\/p>\n

For death has come to our windows,
\n<\/em>the preacher says, it has entered our palaces.
\n<\/em>But I will not rush to push down my sash.
\nInstead, I will turn the leaf of my book.<\/p>\n

Here, the speaker refuses to deny what she knows, death\u2019s undeniable presence, but she also refuses to permit that knowledge to consume her. Again in these lines, Silver creates part of the effect through sound, here the repetition of \u201csh\u201d: rush, push, sash. The poem would be perfectly fine it if concluded with this line, but Silver extends it with a surprising turn similar to the one in \u201cNight Prayer\u201d:<\/p>\n

See with what gentle gravity God
\nlets it hover, in balance, then fall to its side.<\/p>\n

These poems call their readers to share in their reflection. They don\u2019t demand rereading as more elusive poems sometimes do; instead they invite rereading through the hospitality of the tone and language. Of course, now, I am looking forward to Silver\u2019s next book. But I am also content to wait, for the poems we have already in her first two collections welcome our lingering.<\/p>\n

——————————————————<\/p>\n

To propose a guest review or submit a book for review consideration, send a message to lynndomina (at) gmail.com.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anya Krugovoy Silver. I Watched You Disappear. Louisiana State University Press, 2014. 73 pgs. $17.95. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Like many readers, I found Anya Krugovoy Silver\u2019s first collection, The Ninety-Third Name of God, published in 2010, absolutely stunning. I waited impatiently for her next collection, I Watched You Disappear, and eagerly read it when […]<\/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-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","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=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}