ForeWord Clarion Review
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by Camille-Yvette Welsch Three Stars (out of Five) Debut books of poetry often offer similar fare—first love, independence, Eros—but this volume offers a more mature perspective. Rather than first love, Paula Evans Archer examines parental love. Those seeking independence in these poems are grown children, and it is the author, in the role of parent, who is trying to offer flight despite her yearning to keep her children close. The [romantic] love poems here [also] come from long experience; rather than the first bloom of love, they evoke the perennial, not the annual. Archer began her literary career in college, steeping herself in drama and literature at Boston College. She recently published her first novel, Unexpected Life, and she has a second book of poems [planned for release soon]. . . . Focusing on parenthood, Archer writes as a parent amazed, terrified, joyous, and resentful. In “Birthing Break,” she writes of a mother finally alone with her newborn: “...‘Hello Sweet Child’ / Is all that I can breathe / You answer with feet / What else can you do? / Busy with birthing / A moth shedding cocoon.”. . . In other poems, abstractions leech resonance. In “I Miss You More Than the Heart Prepared,” a mother bemoans the inevitable loss of her child to adulthood: “I should have known the day you came / Long pain; worth all the wait / Surprising beauty / Bewitching eyes / Incessant crying / Long songs the balm / Whole days of holding / Rocking closely long.” . . . In other poems, Archer lauds the beauty of winter, imagines her way into a decaying leaf, and praises longevity in marriage. Most poems work with a very short line, suggesting an Imagist approach, while others . . . playfully interject references to Frost, Dickinson, and Lewis Carroll, . . . [and] hark back to more traditional forms with their requisite rhyme schemes. Certainly the [collection] possesses moments of longing that will resonate with parents,[lovers, and artists of every genre]. |
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