Barbara Crooker

These poems are graceful, lyric, occasionally religious reflections on what the poet experiences during a fellowship in Ireland to study the Book of Kells. Poems in the first half of the book are on illuminations in the Book of Kells; poems in the 2nd half are observations on Ireland and her experiences there. Here's part of a poem called "Snake:"
In the Book of Kells,
some snakes are made out of abstract interlace,
while others form complete borders:
serpentine coiling interweaving fretwork tracery:
S.
I could swear I'm looking at that page. Consider the S of snake; how it visually mimics the thing itself. My first name begins with S, so for me there's a symbolic resonance!… (altro)

Les Fauves is Le Fab!

Barbara Crooker's poetry can make me laugh on one page (often!), cry on another, and have me thinking deeply about many things throughout. While there are comfortable, at-home moments, I was surprised (pleasantly!) to find edgier poems than in Crooker's previous collections.

Divided into four sections, it's bookended by ekphrastic poetry, with glimpses of her personal life in between and her time in France adding an extra bit of flavor (". . . Where the local cheese, the picodon, / lies down on its bed of baguette . . ."). There are poems about grammar and punctuation and parts of speech alongside more serious poems, such as her daughter going into labor too early. In "Why I Love Being Married to a Chemist," I smiled at her description and recognized true love; I got the same feeling from "Usage." "My Heart" tells of the jealousy of others' successes. I admire her for speaking about something we all feel but seldom admit.

And then, of course, there are the myriad of original phrases that strike you—"The bands of color faded, smudged into each other like chalk / pastels . . ." and ". . .Isn't this / what heaven will be? Days golden as croissants . . ." and "my mouth filled with fruit and new syllables" and ". . . the grass undecided if it should / take a pass, stay sleeping, rolled up in its patchy old coat."

This was the perfect read for a snowy day at home, and I end with "thank you, thank you, thank you" as Crooker ends one of her poems.… (altro)

What a beautiful book. Master of metaphor, skilled at simile, Crooker has an amazing way of looking at nature—and life in general—and conveying that view to her readers. I found myself reading, underlining, rereading.

In the first poem, "The thin tinsel of the new moon / hangs in the dark sky, a comma / dividing the sentence between / last year's troubles and this year's / hopes . . ."

And:

". . . trees as bare as a politician's promise"

"the crocus, sticking out its plum tongue, / inciting the woods to riot"

". . . The air / stretches and warms; you could pull it / like molasses taffy . . ."

There were poems that caused me to reflect about relationships, some that made me cry. Most made me stop and say, "Why have I never looked at it that way?"

Highly recommended.… (altro)

The epigraph page quote: “’Nothing gold can stay’ –Robert Frost” sets the tone of Gold. The fifty-five poems in the collection carry on the theme of that which is beautiful, valuable, and precious though transient. There are poems about aging, nature, and ekphrastic poems that talk back to works of art. Some of the most poignant are Crooker’s poems about her mother.

We follow her mother’s illness beginning with “On the Day of her Diagnosis” when “the small pearl … / … was cancer, a word that hissed / in the ear like fat in a pan” (p. 14). We sit with Crooker the caregiver in poems like “Peeps” where her mother refuses to eat sensible food: “… I’m not eating this stuff. / Where’s my Peeps?” (p. 24). Finally we grieve, oh we grieve in a multitude of laments and elegies: “Ashes,” “Mother,” “Grief,” “Today” and more.

Crooker’s poems are accessible and warm with a “come hither” tone that embraces the reader and made this reader, at least, feel understood (having lost my own mother a few years ago).

Crooker is a keen observer of nature too, noting its colors with an artist’s eye and vocabulary. Again and again gold glints from these pieces—from the goldenrod in the book’s title poem (“Gold”) and the “…color of money” in “The Stock Market Loses Fluidity” to the leaf gold of nature, and all the golden foods we’re served: honey, peanut butter fudge, golden fat glistening on top of soup. There is also lots of complementary blue, mostly from sky and water. It’s a combination that brings an aliveness and electric sizzle to the collection.

Crooker is an expert on her own life and writes about the most ordinary things with skill, imagination and aural beauty. I will leave you with one more enticing bit to showcase her deftness with language and metaphor: “The seasons change, peel off their coats. / Grief comes and goes with its shaker of salt, / pours over me without warning. Puts items / in my grocery cart that only she would eat” – from “La neige et l‘hiver” (p. 27).

(This review was first published in FellowScript, February 2014.)

… (altro)