Kim Fahner : A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, ed. Phil Hall

A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, ed. Phil Hall
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2023

 

 

 

 

In A Possible Trust, Bloom writes of everyday things, with a keen, empathetic awareness of how to observe human behaviour and suffering, and a careful eye to transforming that universal and specific pain into something extraordinary. Her work reminds me, in style and content, of Bronwen Wallace’s poetry, especially in terms of how she takes note of the details of a routine day. In her afterword, titled “To Connect is a Circular Thing,” Bloom reflects on how poetry has walked alongside her through her life, and how photography and meditation have opened new doors within her poems. She reflects on the shift that took place in her work, over time, when she began to write what she calls “service poetry,” moving into health care settings to give comfort and poetry to patients and staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Bloom is also someone who writes poetry in public spaces, writing spontaneously and offering passersby the gift of personally written poems in her Spontaneous Poetry Booth. Aware of perception, and perspective, and of the importance of close observation, Bloom talks about how connecting is a circular thing: “When I write a poem that works, you and I are in relation.” The poem becomes a living thing, a bridge between poet and reader, with the possibility of it holding space for meaning and healing within its lines and stanzas.

In “The Job of an Apple,” Bloom speaks to the variety of ways in which a simple apple can shapeshift. Here is something that is an apple, meant “to be pie,/to be given to the teacher, to be rotten,” and “to pose for painters/roll behind fridges, behind grocery aisles,/to be hidden, wrapped in paper,/stored for months.” The poem ends with the simple apple’s transformation: “The job of an apple is to be a different poem in the mouth/of every eater. The job an apple is to be juice.” Here is a list poem that sails off into something other, letting the apple become something bigger and more metaphorical than just a piece of fruit.

In “What Works,” Bloom divides the poem into two parts: “Index” and “Demographics.” Using an abecedarian form, she lists things that work—from air, bicycles, chocolate, and a solid house because “all our houses are imaginary.” In the second half of the poem, she lists those who are affected by the things that work, including “men and women, teachers, hospital workers, politicians, people who shop at Loblaws, cake bakers, people who are retired” right down to “people who want attention without saying so, whose bodies/fill with anxiety like a liquid, who love something that won’t leave them,/something that will.” In her close observation, in listing a rich inventory of images, Bloom creates the necessary connective bridge between poet and reader—between seer and documentarian and the reader as a receiver.

The “service poems” are what makes Bloom’s work especially unique. Her ability to enter the health care sector with the gift of poetry is a special one. As Phil Hall writes in his introduction, “In Bloom’s case, craft is almost—dare I say it—love./ She wants us not to observe her skill, but to participate in her discoveries./She wants us with her, not appraising her—love.” Hall also notes Bloom’s “desire to be useful,” to move into difficult spaces that are ones people tend to want to avoid. Having an Rx Poetry Pad and a lab coat as tools for poetic creation, in hospitals, offers people a way to find a poetry “that is willing to know pain, loss, and death may be able to give, if not/cessation, at least company—by words.”

The poem, “Appointment in Samarra,” reflects on observations made in a chemotherapy ward. It begins with a couplet that won’t let the reader turn their eyes away: “30 people in chemo today multiplied by/x hospitals in y countries and z universes.” Here, a patient named only as H “smiles through 4 syringes of chemicals, 2 bags of saline,/and a flush of life-giving killer liquid.” Bloom ends the poem with a reminder: “Slap me good and hard with mortality while I’m strong./My body wants to run as though it’s seen a ghost.” Turning away to avoid seeing the pain, as well as the loss and grief that comes with losing good health, is not the answer.

In the prose poem, “Walking the Hospital,” Bloom documents what it feels like to be a poet in a place that is never comfortable. She writes about how being a poet-in-residence is a new way in which to view hospitals. “Sick people here,” she notes, may just as interchangeably be named as “vulnerable people.” Her motto is: “Everyone who is/alive could use a poem. Whether they want one is a different matter.” A three-page reflection on what it means to walk through sacred spaces of coming and going, Bloom ends the poem with a question, and a small prayer: “If each one poem, person, experience, identity, thought, bone, body—like a point of light—is just itself, does it need a story to connect it to the next one? Awareness, carry me.”

There is always more to say, when you’ve encountered a poetry collection that resonates. Anyone who’s been in a hospital—whether as a staff member, patient, or family member—will find ripples of recognition. What Bloom does, in A Possible Trust, is ask her readers to be in the moment, in an observational and meditative way, even if that means feeling discomfort and pain. In that moment of mindfulness, her poems suggest, we might find something that is made more of light than of dark.

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest full collection of poems is Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022) and she's just published a poetry chapbook, Fault Lines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023). She is the First Vice-Chair for The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim's first novel, The Donoghue Girl, will be published by Latitude 46 Publishing in Fall 2024. She may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com