{"id":90,"date":"2013-09-08T21:30:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T01:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2013-09-15T14:42:04","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T18:42:04","slug":"review-of-lacemakers-by-claire-mcquerry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Review of Lacemakers by Claire McQuerry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"McQuerry<\/a><\/p>\n

Claire McQuerry. Lacemakers. <\/i>Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 77 pgs. $15.95.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Claire McQuerry\u2019s poems ask lots of questions, like this one, which opens \u201cThe Incorruptibles\u201d: \u201cWho would do that, \/ paint a pigeon and let it go?\u201d Or this one, from \u201cYour Father Takes Me Gliding above the Columbia River\u201d: \u201cWhat fault sent your life in its stuttering, \/ a slipped nickel\u2019s elliptic?\u201d Or this one, from \u201cMiles Away\u201d: \u201cWhat did I know \/ about woundedness, how to carry it?\u201d The poems don\u2019t answer these questions so much as consider them. The reader follows McQuerry\u2019s thinking, slowly, pleasurably, wondering at both the questions themselves and at how the speaker has come to ask them. This is a book that rewards contemplative attention.<\/p>\n

Winner of the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award, Lacemakers<\/i> reads as if it had been written much later in the poet\u2019s career, for the poems are self-assured and stylistically adept yet also subtle. Engagingly varied in form, the collection establishes its unity through voice and motif. Several of the poems explore unsatisfying or unfulfilled relationships; many others examine spirituality and mysticism, often through allusions to traditional religious ideas. It is a book of longing, and of restlessness, and of occasional improbable contentment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBook of Hours,\u201d a dramatic monologue in the voice of a medieval monk illuminating a manuscript, expresses every writer\u2019s desire: \u201cI\u2019d like to believe \/ that these, my marks, will last, \/ beyond mildew and the gentle \/ feeding of silverfish.\u201d The poem describes art and prayer and the art of prayer; it attends to the inner world and to the world beyond us and to the \u201cnear and nearly transparent\u201d space between. This poem illustrates several of McQuerry\u2019s strengths. It begins with a startling image: \u201cChrist, the pelican, bends to blood,\u2026\u201d Within the next couple of lines, however, readers know how to situate themselves: \u201cChrist, the pelican, bends to blood, \/ vermilion, finest strokes on lead \/ white. I turn from candlelight.\u201d In medieval bestiaries, the pelican symbolized Christ because according to a 3rd<\/sup>-century Greek text, an angry pelican kills its young, then resurrects them by tearing at its own breast and feeding them its own blood. By the third line of this poem, we know that the monk has painted strands of vermilion across the white pelican. We want to read further, though, not only because of the compelling content, but because of McQuerry\u2019s language. These lines contain some light alliteration and assonance as well as internal rhyme (white, light) which also forms a near rhyme with the opening potent word. \u00a0These examples are typical of McQuerry\u2019s attention to the pleasure of English sounds. In the next stanza we read \u201cmussel shells of milled silver\u2014 \/ in the ring of my lit taper. Illuminate.\u201d And in the fourth stanza: \u201cI will give it a kneeling Saint Michael \/ with silver spear and slain dragon. \/ For the spray work, calyx, \/ cusp, and sheaf.\u201d I have devoted so much space to this poem not because Lacemakers <\/i>is filled with dramatic monologues\u2014it isn\u2019t\u2014but because \u201cBook of Hours\u201d is representative of McQuerry\u2019s care with language, its music and its meaning. I would like to discuss it further, for I haven\u2019t even mentioned the corpse of the calf the monk had found, how its skin has become the pages on which he writes, how its odor has seeped into his own hands\u2014how, in other words, the work of incarnation infuses this collection. But I want to take a look at a couple of other poems too.<\/p>\n

Although Lacemakers <\/i>contains at least half a dozen other poems I\u2019d like to discuss at length, I\u2019ll limit myself to \u201cVotive,\u201d which opens the book, and \u201cSt. Margaret\u2019s Well,\u201d which closes it. \u201cVotive\u201d consists of spare couplets contrasting the effect of modern electric candles\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 with our more traditional expectations, flame and its residue. Electric candles are too precise to commemorate the flesh; they leave behind only \u201cblue \/\/ on the dark globes \/ of your eyelids.\u201d Yet the poem isn\u2019t a critique of technology or of the way we live now so much as it is a recognition that the way we live now still relishes imperfection: \u201cSome \/\/ things in life are not meant \/ for such precision\u2014the snug \/\/ dovetail of your joined hands; \/ the bent maple outside.\u201d Again, McQuerry explores complex themes\u2014if life has meaning, where does it reside?\u2014through her attention to concrete language and unique imagery. The poem is interesting to read because the speaker thinks interesting thoughts and the poet writes interesting words.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSt. Margaret\u2019s Well\u201d fittingly concludes the collection. It describes a particular experience\u2014a visit to a literal English well\u2014in order to have a final word on what has turned out to be the book\u2019s primary theme, the relationship between the ordinary and the miraculous and the necessity of enfleshed miracles. A couple, two \u201cpilgrims\u201d arrive at the well, touching its stones just as a blind woman had touched its stones nearly eight centuries earlier. After she \u201cdrank from the chalice of her own hands, \/ \u2026light poured in clearly through the trees.\u201d What\u2019s important about the story, of course, isn\u2019t its factual reliability, but the believers\u2019 desire to believe: \u201cthere is something about belief\u2019s \/ persistence, even when myth has become \/ only myth.\u201d Myths are true not because their content can be verified but because they provide us with meaning.<\/p>\n

Lacemakers <\/i>is a book saturated with meaning. I am looking forward to more of Claire McQuerry\u2019s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claire McQuerry. Lacemakers. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 77 pgs. $15.95. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Claire McQuerry\u2019s poems ask lots of questions, like this one, which opens \u201cThe Incorruptibles\u201d: \u201cWho would do that, \/ paint a pigeon and let it go?\u201d Or this one, from \u201cYour Father Takes Me Gliding above the Columbia River\u201d: \u201cWhat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,5,4],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek","tag-claire-mcquerry","tag-crab-orchard","tag-lacemakers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","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=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}