Handfuls of Time by Ruth Daigon — Reviewed by Sandy McKinney

Small Poetry Press
Paper, $15.00
ISBN: 1-891298-17-X

nyone who spends a fair amount of time hanging out in poetry forums or workshops will, at least once a day, come upon a poem about which the question arises: "What is this poem about?" This question isn't limited to forums and workshops for fledgling poets. I've had to ask the same question about many a poem published in the New Yorker, and even in Poetry. Perhaps a contemporary fear of the banal, along with the sentimental, pressures the aspiring poet to avoid the emotional, the multi-layered, the passionate venture and urges him to settle for pure form, as long as the form doesn't call up any embarrassing questions regarding its ancestry. This refusal to embrace the intrepid often leaves an elegantly structured group of words sitting on the page like a collection of brilliant but mismatched gems in a setting nobody would want to wear to the party.

Take any poem from Ruth Daigon's latest book, Handfuls of Time, and you will never find yourself asking this question. Whatever their ancillary subjects, these poems are about breath, about heartbeat, about that struck moment between our observation of anything (including ourselves) and our response. They are about the space between contiguous objects, the felt moment that registers itself in that part of the mind which is still capable of wonder, and that resides there as a permanent reminder of our tenuous citizenship in a world still awaiting definition.

The book is organized in five sections, each of which is introduced by a brief quotation from another writer, which functions as a canopy uniting all the poems in that section. Part II opens with a quote from T. S. Eliot:

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter

and consists of twelve love poems without a single frankly erotic line. These are poems about conjugal love, and their unfolding spreads out in concentric circles of emotional resonance until they arrive at this astonishing image:

And deep in the closet
behind dark curtains of breath
our clothes hanging side by side
mingle inconceivably intimate.

Although almost every poem in the collection offers its own fullness and completion, many readers will agree, I believe, that the most delightful thing to be discovered is the persuasive charm of so many unexpected images, just popping out from any poem selected at random:

against all evidence, all reason
[we] continue living in our small stunned paradise

the gorgeous realm of the forgotten,
naked with summer in its mouth
and the honey breath of spring

a hummingbird light as a spill of sugar
traces invisible paths until light unravels

A note for readers so unfortunate as not to know Daigon's work: she was founder and editor of Poets On for twenty years, and is the author of seven previous books. What a joy it is to have the opportunity to encounter a poet of such mature achievement.

Check out her poems in the AR Poets section.