10/30/2024
Laura Foley honors Cather’s sentiments as she paints pictures with words borne on wings from her own quiet center. Foley’s work is intellectually significant, emotionally satisfying and precisely crafted. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1098691201846946&set=a.579194347129970
It's This
by Laura Foley
Fernwood Press, 2024
62 Poems ~ 97 pages
ISBN #: 978-1-59498-103-6Review by Michael Escoubas
As I began reading Laura Foley’s stunning new volume, It’s This, my mind wandered toward the work of another thoughtful author: Willa Cather. Cather, one of the early 20th century’s most awarded novelists, offers two quotations which inspired this review:
“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
And
“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”
Laura Foley honors Cather’s sentiments as she paints pictures with words borne on wings from her own quiet center. Foley’s work is intellectually significant, emotionally satisfying and precisely crafted.
“Prayer,” although it appears late (page 85) in the volume, sets the kind of tone envisioned by Cather:
Give us this morning of wet grass,
of geese landing over us,
feet dangling as they drop
to the rippling pond.
Give us this bowl of mung beans,
These olives from Spain,
this garlic and kale—nourish us,
so we may be worthy,
this quiet May morning,
so we may learn
to surrender
all of it with grace
This poem speaks to me because of its plea to live in and enjoy the present moment, but also counsels the reality of a future surrender of that moment. Foley’s “life in reality” approach resonates. All of this and more stirs, within the poem, a silent mantra captured by four simple words, Let me be worthy.
In an age where some poets approach their work and their readers with political and social “axes to grind”—Laura Foley’s work refreshes my spirit.
Foley finds poetry in intricate details: “Ode to a Wasp,” a mere six lines becomes a profound meditation on death:
You dove into my hot chai—
I’m sorry you died,
though at least it was brief
and cinnamon sweet.
I wonder if I
will be so blessed.
There is sensitivity to pain in Laura Foley’s work. I like her approach: Foley looks pain in the face but never capitulates. “Then” provides ample evidence:
The human world
kicks you in the head
again and again—
so you must seek beyond the No,
the song of dried beech leaves
ringing in the brittle wind,
a hollow tone to shiver you
like a tuning fork,
so the healing bell inside yourself
will resound, in quietness,
with Yes
and Yes and Yes.
Among the features that stand out to me is Foley’s skill in using the visible natural as an accurate register of the invisible spiritual world of people. I’m struck by “the song of dried beech leaves,” as a response to the “human world / that “kicks you in the head,” “like a tuning fork, so the healing bell inside yourself / will resound, in quietness.”
In “Spring Treachery,” the poet falls on slippery ice, injured, as she grabs a seemingly innocent hemlock tree—(palms, arms, and legs get bruised)—corresponds to those unexpected hurts delivered by those we assumed trustworthy.
In “Lost and Found,” the poet, on her sophomore science field trip becomes mesmerized looking at crabs, snails, starfish, and other sea-life. She is filled with joy by natural things; they become part of her in moments no words can tell. The intimate experience corresponds to our throw and go world bereft of “losing oneself in the world of tiny shifting things.”
It's This captures the spirit of Willa Cather’s “calm in the storm,” as well as Cather’s self-effacement. Foley’s life is one of ongoing respect that another’s “heart is a dark forest, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”
I am honored to say that Laura Foley’s profound engagement with life, her generosity of heart, shines forth in a volume I will proudly display on my bookshelf.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER - Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.
Posted October 1, 2024
