Elizabeth A. I. Powell: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________

Too Late to Stop Now

 

This week I dragged the Xmas tree out like a corpse

I was homesick for mutual assured destruction and 1985

Love was a meeting of solitudes, the thin tissue around ornaments,

Anne in the neonatal unit saving junk-sick babies

I drank oolong tea in bed, read DeLillo, had a neck ache

Let the Words of my Mouth and the Meditations of My Heart

I rocked some preemie babies, made new cells, a couple of poems

Suddenly, Anne in hospital, lymph nodes, margins, ten inches of snow

I didn’t take anything personally except when I did

My neighbors telemark skiing, bonfiring their vanities

Anne lost numbers, words, minutes, space, knitting needles, life

There was still a God, and the maple apple Bundt cake went stale

I realized everyone was my dead mother acting in a Beckett play

I accepted this week all previous weeks prepared me for

with its nervous dirges and the Tibetan Book of the Dead

I was still this Elizabeth and the soul who claimed this Elizabeth

This week love in my pantry, on my doorstep, on my tongue,

the ice caps kept melting, a terrible sun.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth A.I. Powell is the author of three books of poems, most recently Atomizer (LSU Press). Her second book of poems, Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances was chosen for “Books We Love 2016” by The New Yorker.  Her novel, Concerning the Holy Ghost's Interpretation of JCrew Catalogues was published in 2019 in the U.K.  Recent poems appear in The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Women’s Review of Books, among others. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Northern Vermont University. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                         Samuel Beckett by Nahidh Salman

Comments

[Bill Nevins]

A stunner of a poem!

[Grace Cavalieri]

I loved WILLIE LOMAN's RECKLESS DAUGHTER And I love ELIZABETH POWELL -- and also her haircut which I like better than Beckett's.

[Denise Duhamel]

Love this poem! Memory and elegy and witness all swirl into a startling ending.

[lally]

amen

[Nin Andrews]

Brilliant!

[Jody]

Wow

[Don Berger]

I especially like the measured breath of each line, and the amount of life she includes in each, with great movement from one time or situation to another. She covers a lot of ground, musically. Nice poem Elizabeth, and thank you Terence for showing us.

[David Lehman]

Outstanding work -- from the simile in line one and thee nostalgia in line 2. There isn't a word I'd change (except maybe "DeLillo"). Grace Cavalieri is right on the mark.

[Eileen Reich]

Love the poem and the artwork!

[Susan Campbell]

This week love in my pantry, on my doorstep, on my tongue,

I take it all personally. Good poem!

[Clarinda]

I found myself breathing in unison with the lines

[Joanna Fuhrman]

Love the sad whirlwind of life here

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Beautiful and painful. I just want to say "I'm sorry."

[Earle Hitchner]

Unpacking this poem by Elizabeth A.I. Powell is a rewarding challenge. Her poem teems with echoic references, hiding-in-plain-sight imagery, leavening musicality, and sheer, if also sly, delight in not only the act of poetry but also the art of poetry. I’ll start with the title: “Too Late to Stop Now.” I immediately thought of IT’S TOO LATE TO STOP NOW, Van Morrison’s two-LP live album released in 1974. One of the songs on it is “Into the Mystic,” a Morrison composition ending with these five words: “Too late to stop now.” I can also trace a through-line from Psalm 137 to the song it inspired, “Rivers of Babylon,” recorded by the Melodians, Dennis Brown, U-Roy, Boney M., and even Linda Ronstadt in a brief a cappella treatment. The sixth line of Powell’s poem, “Let the Words of my Mouth and the Meditations of My Heart,” varies in only three words from this line in that song: “Let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our hearts.” Elsewhere in her poem Powell employs antitheses to bracing effect: “homesick for mutual assured destruction,” “Love was a meeting of solitudes,” and “I didn’t take anything personally except when I did.” These contradictions are not just self-reflective but self-directed. They reveal a stark inexorability of fate or destiny culminating in “I realized everyone was my dead mother acting in a Beckett play” and “I was still this Elizabeth and the soul who claimed this Elizabeth.” No less impressive is Powell’s nimble wit in such phrases or lines as “bonfiring their vanities” (an obvious nod to Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES) and “I drank oolong tea in bed, read DeLillo, had a neck ache.” As wonderful a tour de force as, say, DeLillo’s 1997 novel UNDERWORLD may be, a “neck ache” from reading it in bed seems inevitable. That underscores another Powell gift: the compact revelations of her lists, including this one comprising line 11: “Anne lost numbers, words, minutes, space, knitting needles, life.” I hope it’s not too late to stop now and affirm Powell’s poem as preternaturally powerful. Bravissima!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Earle. I give your comment an A+.