EILEEN TABIOS Engages
EYEWITNESS by Natalie Safir
EYEWITNESS by Natalie Safir
(Dos Madres Press, Loveland, OH, 2016)
In Natalie
Safir’s EYEWITNESS, there amongst
others are two poems, “Old Woman Walking by the River” and “The Mountain.” For
me, the two book-end the rest of the poems because the poems are, as the book
title indicates, of eyewitness.
Here is “Old Woman Walking by the River”:
I consider
it one bookend because the collection’s persona, the white-haired woman, has
moved forward and continues to move forward on the path of life but—and to me
this is significant—paralleling the nearby “wide river.” Her position as
parallel, perhaps never crossing, the river places her as an observer of the
life that might be symbolized by the river.
Here is “The
Mountain”:
I consider
it the other bookend because of its offered hard-earned lesson:
How take our small goals seriously when flux / is the state of life’s incomprehensible map?
Of course, a
lot of living—a lot of witnessing—occurs between the two book-end poems. A
test, thus, of the collection would be whether the poems also bear effective (wise) testimony. The above ending
two lines would indicate so, and hence we have an astute poem like “Potatoes”
which begin
In the
dream I repeatedly shop
for
groceries at the same market.
…
This
time my mother is with me
asking
the clerk for a side of beef
and
bushels of potatoes.
She is
expecting a crowd of people
both of
us know will never arrive.
I go
along with this madness
because
she is a good cook,
I love
french fries and I can
easily
let chunks of beef
slip to
the floor for the dogs.
Am I
trying to keep her busy
or feed
some larger illusion
we have
entered together?
For another
example, we also have the moving poem:
These poems,
or many of them, drive from some pain. I’m grateful the poet pushed through to
write them with wide-open eyes and determined hand.
*****
Eileen Tabios does not let her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work: THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS was reviewed by Joey Madia for New Mystics Reviews, Book Masons and Literary Aficionado; and EXCAVATING THE FILIPINO IN ME was reviewed by Aileen Ibardaloza for "Filipina American Literature: Reading Recommendations" (Barbara Jane Reyes Blog). She released three books and two chaps in 2016, and is scheduled to release at least three publications in 2017. More info at http://eileenrtabios.com
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