{"id":506,"date":"2017-11-21T15:43:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T20:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2017-11-21T15:43:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T20:43:39","slug":"review-of-still-pilgrim-by-angela-alaimo-odonnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=506","title":{"rendered":"Review of Still Pilgrim by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Angela Alaimo O\u2019Donnell. Still Pilgrim. <\/em>Paraclete Press, 2017. 77 pgs. $18.00.<\/p>\n

The first thing readers might notice about Angela Alaimo O\u2019Donnell\u2019s latest collection, Still Pilgrim, <\/em>is that the title character is an ordinary (if more attentive than some) woman meandering through this ordinary (and yet extraordinary) world. She is observant and devoted and also witty. Hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour, her world seems to preclude stillness, yet she seeks it nevertheless and occasionally even finds it. Her outer world, in which she watches her mother undress and later dresses her own son, reads poetry and visits museums, listens to Frank Sinatra and fries pork chops, guides her pilgrimage inward. This collection confirms what every pilgrim learns\u2014every journey is a journey to the interior.<\/p>\n

The poems are near-sonnets (she refers to them as sonnets, but I am more curmudgeonly conservative on these matters), 14 rhymed lines close to iambic pentameter. Through the collection, the poems demonstrate how flexible a form the sonnet can be. Despite the consistent iambs, O\u2019Donnell\u2019s rhythm varies through strategically placed caesuras, polysyllabic words juxtaposed against monosyllabic ones, hard consonant sounds interspersed among softer ones. The rhymes, too, vary in tone, from somber to hopeful to humorous. The variety O\u2019Donnell exhibits within the comparatively restrictive form mirrors the construction of the speaker, always identified only as \u201cthe pilgrim\u201d but nevertheless developed as a round character with moods and worries and insights, successes and failures.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening stanza of \u201cThe Still Pilgrim Tells a Fish Story\u201d:<\/p>\n

Find the fish you need to kill and kill it.
\nThe Moby Dick of your life. The one who
\nkeeps running away with your line. Chill it
\non ice, then eat it cold, smoked, and blue.
\nThis is the way you have your way with it
\nafter it\u2019s had its way so long with you.<\/p>\n

The imperative mood of the opening line is enhanced by its ten consecutive monosyllabic words, including the repetition of \u201ckill.\u201d The sentence, reproduced as the line, is emphatic. The rhythm slows a bit in the next two lines, in part because they contain three words of two syllables each, but also because the sounds of the words are softer, and their grammatical functions are less insistent\u2014the two consecutive prepositions in line three for instance. Line five approaches the force of line one\u2014and its structure is quite similar\u2014but it is immediately and effectively undercut by line six. We get the sense that the speaker won\u2019t turn out to be as triumphant as the stanza wants to suggest. The second stanza confirms this impression:<\/p>\n

Yet even once you kill it, it will still
\nhaunt your dreams, aim its skull at your small boat,
\nbatter your bow till it shatters, spill
\nthe sea into your world and down your throat.
\nBy night, at the mercy of the same fish
\nwhom you dispatched and served upon a dish.
\nDid you really believe there\u2019d come a day
\nwhen you would be the one that got away?<\/p>\n

With the repetition of \u201ckill it,\u201d the first line of this stanza recalls the first line of the poem, its meaning emphasized by the insistent internal rhyme: \u201ckill\u2026will still.\u201d \u201cStill\u201d here also evokes the \u201cstill pilgrim,\u201d though in this poem her spirit seems anything but still. The pattern of rhyme means that we\u2019ll notice one more instance two lines later, \u201cspill,\u201d but again that line contains an internal rhyme with \u201ctill.\u201d The line between includes the off rhyme of \u201cskull.\u201d The sonic effects are appropriately forceful, aligned with this content, an obsession, a haunting, of a person determined to rid herself of \u201cthe fish\u201d she needs \u201cto kill.\u201d Obsessions can never be truly killed, of course, as Melville\u2019s novel teaches us. The last lines respond to the colloquial expression, \u201cfish story,\u201d in the title: \u201cDid you really believe there\u2019d come a day \/ when you would be the one that got away?\u201d She will never, in other words, get away. Perhaps the \u201cfish story\u201d is the one she\u2019s told herself\u2014that she could get away.<\/p>\n

Ironically, pilgrims don\u2019t generally try to escape their obsessions but rather walk toward them. Those who flee end up like Jonah, awash in the stinking bodily fluids of the beast that will force them to face their calling. Pilgrims aren\u2019t necessarily prophets\u2014through their more contemplative practices, they can often seem the opposite of prophets\u2014but the two roles share at least one characteristic, the near impossibility of being declined.<\/p>\n

Some of the poems are more light-hearted, and among my favorites is \u201cThe Still Pilgrim\u2019s Refrain.\u201d This poem exploits the line breaks to build anticipation, repeating a single word at the beginning of each line, the reader\u2019s delight increasing with each instance. Here is the poem in its entirety:<\/p>\n

Home again and most like home
\nis the need to leave and return
\nagain, the sojourn fun and done
\nagain, and now my life\u2019s my own
\nagain. I wake up in my bed
\nagain, make up my day from scratch
\nagain, give thanks I am not dead
\nagain, make sure my two shoes match<\/p>\n

again, and walk into the world
\nagain, set foot upon the path
\nI\u2019ve walked so many times before
\nagain. I will not do the math.
\nAgain I sing my pilgrim song.
\nAgain I am where I belong.<\/p>\n

Is a pilgrim simply a restless soul, unable to sit still, to take a vow of stability, a mendicant rather than a monastic? Perhaps. But this pilgrim recognizes her pattern of departure and return, the rhythm created by walking the same path. By the end of the poem she recognizes the foundation of her calling, not to go where she is not, but to be where she is.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell includes an afterword that I found particularly insightful in its discussion of the origin of these poems. Her description of her visit to Melville\u2019s grave reveals something we readers often know but seldom accept\u2014the coincidental, associative, and indirect nature of artistic inspiration. These poems do have an autobiographical origin, but as with much art, it\u2019s not what many readers might predict.<\/p>\n

The book is also one that readers might not predict, featuring a speaker who can be serious about her faith without being dogmatic, who is comfortable with paradox, who trusts that her life has meaning even when that meaning remains partly obscured.<\/p>\n

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

Angela Alaimo O\u2019Donnell. Still Pilgrim. Paraclete Press, 2017. 77 pgs. $18.00. The first thing readers might notice about Angela Alaimo O\u2019Donnell\u2019s latest collection, Still Pilgrim, is that the title character is an ordinary (if more attentive than some) woman meandering through this ordinary (and yet extraordinary) world. She is observant and devoted and also witty. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","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=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}