Howe “Infinite Disguises” & Young, “Here” (Reviewed by Julie J Nichols)

Review
======

A double review of two recent books of poetry by two unimpeachable, well-known lovely Mormon women poets.

Titles and Authors: Infinite Disguises, by Susan Elizabeth Howe
and
Here, by Darlene Young
Publisher of both: By Common Consent Press
Date of both: 2023
Pages and cover remarks:   Here: 91 pages, with interesting notes and comments starting on p. 89 and a cover photograph of a backyard clothesline with a vintage feeling to it, sepia, with some tools and a large tree: comfortable. Home. Here is home.
Infinite Disguises: 79 pages, with a close-up of Chloe the pug on the cover, to whom the book is dedicated with deep affection and a sweet wish that the poet hopes her spirit is as bright as her pup’s. Perhaps the first disguise.
ISBN: Infinite Disguises: 978-1-948218-90-0
Here: 978-1-948218-88-7
Cost (on Amazon, both paperback): EACH $9.99. Buy them both!

Reviewed by Julie J. Nichols for the Association of Mormon Letters

Sometimes we can explain better what we mean when we’re looking at words or language or literature if we compare and contrast two instances that are reassuringly alike in some ways but gloriously different in others. I hope neither of these exemplary poets will mind if I speak of them together in this way, not only to bring readers’ attention to their very existence, because mature women poets writing successful poems from their heart-might-mind-and-strengths are vital to our canon, but all the better to clarify how each is unique, read-worthy, and wonderful.

Let me start with where the poets start, where their ideas begin.

Once upon a time, Susan Elizabeth Howe told a creative writing class of mine that she gets her ideas from what she calls a “poetic moment.” She was hard-pressed to explain exactly what she meant, but I thought I understood, and my students seemed satisfied: a poetic moment impresses itself upon the poet as it happens. She has an experience, a sensory or intellectual aha!, in which she senses the potential for wonderment and wordplay. Work begins, and a poem ensues.

Darlene Young, on the other hand, says, in a podcast with the Faith Matters Foundation on May 13, 2023, that she has an ordinary experience, for example, she takes her son to get his wisdom teeth out and then decides to make herself frame it as a poem, to relive it, to deepen it, to make it more poignant. She does this by “making it strange,” employing specific details in the pursuit of truths—hard, thought-provoking, complicated—that are not often addressed in Sunday meetings. Work begins, and a poem ensues.

The difference may be that Howe sinks into an often-unsought impression informed by her unique sensibility and sense of humor and lets a poem arise, while Young notices an ordinary experience and intentionally chooses to make a poem so that others will recognize that experience for themselves.

Examples are necessary.

Begin by looking at the tables of content.

A TOC in a book of poetry reveals the poet’s concerns in the world as surely as it reveals her relationship with language. There are infinite ways to relate to language. I am always made new by a new fine writer’s work or a fine writer’s new work, whether that’s a student or a New York Times bestselling author; in any instance, my awareness of language’s variety and connection bubbles and glows with gratitude. Young talks in that podcast about the “accessibility continuum,” declaring that it’s her goal to “take away [the] fear” often associated with “dense” poetry; Howe, on the other hand, seems to relish the exercise that “dense,” allusive poetry can require of its readers.

So, the TOC of Infinite Disguises divides the collection into seven short sections: “Hinges,” “The Writhing Animal,” “Americo-Centric,” “Messengers and Familiars,” “Stags and Hens,” “Brood,” and “Translated.” In this last section, the poem entitled “Pasta, Translated” sent me to a web page about pasta to figure out what Howe’s referring to in this and the other seven stanzas (p. 73):

for male bonding rituals:

slaps, pens, tubes,  [these are penne]
moustache-like things, [mostaccioli]
hoses, rifles [fusilli longhi]

Now, this is delightful. Smart juxtapositions of possible purposes for these names and types of pasta. No commentary. Just funny, clever, and playful. And, of course, an exercise in translation, in thinking about what words themselves mean. A little bit further right on my accessibility continuum. (More examples to follow.)

Young’s TOC has four parts, all of them headed by a midsentence elliptical phrase, perhaps taken from a poem within that section but maybe not. In the section entitled “…jostle and jounce…” there’s a poem that contains the phrase “the kind of day in which…” eleven times, with four variations, all of which (sorry) end with specific details like “…traffic clotted and oozed fretfully” or “birds sat lonely in bare trees” (“Forgive Me,” p. 6). These details don’t need to be translated for their effect; they evoke a clear and focused (and rather melancholy) emotion. They invite the reader to sit comfortably to the left-middle of the accessibility continuum.

The other sections of Young’s book are “…winter lurking in the wings…”, “…this jumblesale world…”, and “…its glorious burn…”  Her poems’ titles fall into categories not bounded by these section heads—ones about her sons and husband, ones about growing older, and ones about Adam and Eve. They’re tenderly sequenced so that sons and husband, Adam and Eve, growing old on this earth are felt together, through juxtaposition of specific details, ironies, regrets, and losses. They are a pleasure to read. The principal mode is emotional.

Howe’s are more cerebral. You want to have read Emily Dickenson and Christopher Smart, the Psalms, and the news. You want to have been struck by lightning. You want to have let your irritation simmer after a million spam phone calls and to appreciate a furious response that never calls them what they are (just ends with “questions you can’t possibly answer because you don’t understand,” p. 12).

Like Young, Howe embraces family (“Bathing My Mother,” “Knife at the Wedding,” “The Arch of Marriage”). She does not neglect spirit, but her approach is less personal than Young’s, wittier. Both poets have an admirable relationship to form, to sound and rhythm, rhyme, and shape. Dip randomly into either book (say, somewhere close to the middle) for strong samplings. In these lines from “After the Fire, Be Still My Soul,” in Here (p. 46), note among the images the alliterations, the repetitions, and the gentle rhyme:

I will tattoo Thee inside my eyelids,
Rehearse Thee and rehearse Thee. I will whisper
Thy name to myself as I fall asleep
So that I wake to Thee. I will keep
Forever, my finger in the book.

“’Buckle up with Jesus,’” in Infinite Disguises (pp. 40-41), is a narrative poem rat-a-tat-tatting with rhythms and imagery you have to hopalong to stay abreast of:

Mountain Dew all around or whatever
I want in my 44-ounce cup to suck up
The laziness, fatigue, that fibromyalgia disease.
Everyone has a chest tattoo and no work to do….
“That’s Trig,” Jesus says, “and there he sits.”

Both these women are mature, well-established poets, having won well-deserved awards in and out of the Mormon-lit world. Here might be the right gift for your middle-aged mother friends navigating missionary sons, baseball-playing husbands, and the bewildering roller coaster of earth life. Infinite Disguises might be perfect for the less personal, more allusive friends in your purview. Either or both would be a great gift for yourself, the seeker of more in excellent local-but-universal poems.