A Poetry Break
By Kay Day
Ocean Publishing
ISBN 0-9717641-0-7

ay Day's aptly titled new book, A Poetry Break, offers just that. This is not a book for perusing in the library, but rather one to pick up at any moment of relaxation, a tidbit of freshness in your day of too much to do, too many intellectual ponderings, a too-rushed desperation to finish by that deadline.

Dipping into these vignettes, sprung from a life both lived and contemplated, inspires us to say to a friend, "Hey, let's just stop a minute before you rush off. How about a small glass of wine and a chat, sharing our memories of what it was like before life sucked us into our imaginary mandate to achieve?"

Day shares her memories: a Southern childhood; the thrill and challenge of motherhood; friends who have grieved her; intimates who sustain her, and always, in every poem, a tender voice: calm, resolved, and grateful for every moment of her busy days.

This delicate wordsmith doesn't talk about her heart, but she speaks from it. Shocked and horrified by a news snippet on the TV about a child kidnapped and mutilated, she rushes upstairs to her daughter's bedroom to

"search for her warm body
in tangled covers
on the muted bed.

Not caring if I wake her
I gather her close
feel the sour breath
of news prowling
like some mythic raptor
hunting for small game." 

In "The Gift" her mother "penned her tears on blue note paper . . . brought her verses home / for us to eat, she clothed / us in her stories, / mentored us with homily . . . so that her daughter / could be a writer."

The book is in four sections. Readers already acquainted with Kay Day and her work won't be surprised to find that the first section consists of twelve sonnets, her preferred and accomplished form. Following are poems about family history; the Southern landscape, both urban and wild; musings on religious art ; bits of domestic irony; and always a generous and appreciative sense of sharing what she knows, mentally alert and emotionally naked to the bone.

An intelligent introduction by Ruth Daigon opens the text, followed by Day's foreword concerning her style and her aspiration for her work , and ending with a typically open-handed list of poetry sites, both online and print. Brief bios of both herself and Ruth Daigon, and notes on some of the poems, complete the crafting of a little gem whose sparkle is never sullied by a mean word or an involvement in the too-frequent modern style that wallows in a brittle despair.

I can't read a Kay Day poem without remembering Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet which ends:

Love in the open hand, no thing but that,
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
"Look what I have! — And these are all for you.

© Sandy McKinney