Susanne Dyckman : Elizabeth Robinson’s Apprehend: A Reflection

from Report from the Robinson Society, Vol. 1, No. 1

 

 

 

 

This is not a review.  This is about an experience.  This is about what happens when I read Elizabeth Robinson’s poetry.

I want to talk about the writing, but first note my close and enduring friendship with Elizabeth.  We have read our work together and written collaboratively over many years. We know one another’s families and have community in common. That said, I want to put those significant truths aside as I think of her writing and how I engage with it.  

Elizabeth is a prolific writer.  Choosing a favorite book of hers is much like choosing a favorite child, which, of course, can’t be done. So it is easiest to focus on a single book, Apprehend (2003), a volume based on fairy tales. It is one I pull from my bookshelf often.

I do not memorize much, have never been very good at reciting by heart.  But Elizabeth’s line “a small thing fits into a small hand” (Treasure Chest, pg. 50) is a phrase I carry with me.  A tender line, that small thing and small hand, a moment of softness to keep. 

Yet in this volume it is not a small thing that fits, but everything.  Immediately following that line, continuing it, is the word “clutched.”  A harder sounding word, a holding tight.  And in these poems, everything is clutched, turned over and inside out and examined. “Things sent down seep from one conclusion to the next” (Treasure Chest, pg. 49).  The spirit, the environment, the body, beauty, and disfigurement are all equal inhabitants of her poetic world.  I am as likely to find who she, the poet, calls God high in a nest in a tree, or in lowly vermin, or detached fingers, or in a tentative kiss, as in that word itself.  And wonder how they can all be so equally embraced. 

Wonder, a result of being enthralled by the leaps that, within the context of the work, all make sense.  The underlying spirit of the language propels me forward.  What is next?  I am not always quite certain, on first reading, what that will be, but it doesn’t matter. I quickly learn to trust. The surprises, the displacement, and, after being temporarily in a wilderness, the resettling.    

Even with repeated readings, the work holds me. The “small hand” of Elizabeth is a generous one.  I am with the spirit of her words as they hover, making a place for me to linger.  “Here we are moved toward battle and warped glass/but moved by/our Lady, the ship, who prefers delicacy.” (Asea, pg. 36). As I travel through the quiet intensity of this poetry, I am always astonished.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Susanne Dyckman is the author of two full length volumes of poetry (equilibrium’s form, Shearsman Books, and A Dark Ordinary, Furniture Press Books) as well as number of chapbooks, including two published by above/ground press.  Her work (both collaborative and individual) has been published in a number of journals, the latest being Fence, Denver Quarterly, and parentheses. She has taught undergraduate and graduate level writing courses, and for five years hosted a summer poetry reading series. She lives in Albany, California.