Customer Reviews

Slamming Open the Door

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've just finished reading Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's "Slamming Open the Door." That's not to say I read it in one sitting. The theme--a daughter's murder and its aftermath--is simply too stark and it's told more brutally and more beautifully than I can absorb without coming up for air.

The poems follow the arc of the crime and its aftermath: the unanswered phone, the false hope, the crime scene--the body. Then the funeral, the tributes, the net that closes so slowly and so carefully around the killer, the trial--and then what can only be called an afterlife for the writer and her family. In the hands of many writers this arc would take us inexorably downward, but not with Sheeder Bonanno. The book's pacing matches the pace of grief itself: soaring pain, tenderness, mundane detail, numinous messages from the natural world--and gallows humor. To lift her spirits the writer's husband offers her anything that might please her.

And I say, Okay, I want
to have an affair,
or I want a teacup Chihuahua.

And my husband says,
Yes, alright, maybe the affair,
Because dogs are a lot of work.

There's not an ounce of sensationalism in the story, no-one is spared and almost no-one is damned--not even the killer's son, who travels "on a parallel road / with just a sliver of wind / between" him and the author. On page after page, Sheeder Bonanno honors her daughter with the truth about their relationship:

Don't pity me:
I was too lazy to walk
up the stairs
to tuck her in at night.

Such weakness binds the rest of us, saddled with the same failings, to her. We don't pity her. We peer into the room where she's brushing Leidy's hair, pulling a little too hard, or into another room where they're cheek to cheek in an embrace, and it's like we're looking into a mirror.

Calling these poems cathartic somehow misses the point. There's nothing to learn from murder, and nothing that you can avoid by reading them. They open the door onto the wilderness--the "ever after" that victims' loved ones endure after the final chapter in their story is written or after the final credits roll. But each poem allows us a brief and indispensable glimpse into how an individual human spirit has navigated the worst that fate--or another human being--can inflict. As such each is a point of light, evidence of some kind of resurrection.

"Slamming Open the Door" is a work of shocking talent and even more shocking generosity. "Ice Skating" is my favorite poem in the volume: Sheeder Bonanno and her husband, "two pitiable lurchers," are skating where God sent them: thin ice, bad light. They see the rest of us, happy and oblivious, over here where the ice is good, our children skating backwards into the future. And they bless us.

If that doesn't answer murder, nothing does.

Some tragedies are labeled "unspeakable," but there a special few who summon the bravery to speak.

"Slamming Open the Door" is a collection of poems voiced by a woman reflecting on her daughter's murder. That voice is not the poet's invention, but her very own. Author Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno and her daughter Leidy are as real as you or I. That very reality makes Bonanno's work all the more stunning, moving and horrifying. At times as a reader I felt it nearly too much to take, but in the author's strength to share her story I gained strength to bear witness to it. In the depths of grief, it is the author's ability to find compassion, peace and even humor that transforms this book into more than just an attempt to make sense of the unthinkable. Bonanno takes her readers by the hand and allows them to accompany her on a journey that approaches grace.

Not even the best of descriptions can do justice to "Slamming Open the Door." It must be read.

[...]
And another fabulous review from the Library Journal:

"In her debut volume, Bonanno personifies death as an intruder who insinuates itself into her life after the unthinkable happens, the murder of a daughter at the hands of an ex-boyfriend. Chronologically arranged, almost a novel in verse, these poems are written with startling clarity and precision, telling of a mother's and a family's first worry, the unanswered calls, the frantic drive, the certainty that the killer's face was the daughter's last image, the trial, aftermath, and the final adjustment. "Losing your daughter,/to murder,/requires adjustment," she says. This horror is the stuff of which nightmares are made. It becomes "your very own/annunciation." Written with skill in tight, spare lines without sentimentality or melodrama, Bonanno launches readers through the experience, one that evokes a universal terror. The daughter's death becomes the talisman for domestic violence, for women who must die at the hands of those who feel it is their right to kill them. In one of the final poems, "Ladybug," the daughter's nickname, the narrator "see[s] them everywhere": "Hundreds of them,/shining orange and black,/the dead and the living together-/the living/on the backs of the dead." A stunning first book; highly recommended." - Karla Huston - Library Journal

Kathy Sheeder Bonanno is one of the funniest people I know. She is a member of my church and makes people laugh at satire, sarcasm and poking fun at solid church workers. So, imagine what I thought she'd be like after the murder of her daughter! I was at the memorial service she describes, though I didn't know her daughter. The incident seemed to have quieted her for a couple of years. This book seems to be the result of the times she had to endure. The collection of poems has received a lot of attention, particularly from Terri Gross on "Fresh Air", July 29, 2009. If you are able, listen to the show and you will cherish the book even more as you can hear Kathy's voice and her thoughts about murder and life. Last Spring, around the time the book was first published, Kathy was back at it at a church auction bidding up the contributed items and making people laugh. By the way, though I can't guarantee it, I am sure that much of the profit from this book will go to worthy causes. At her book signing at the church, the profits went to the religious education program. Kathy is a great person and this is a moving work.

I heard the author interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday, and I could not get out of my car to do my lunchtime errands. Ms. Bonanno's poetry is beautiful and powerful.

I cried my way through this beautiful book.
From the first poem full of confusion--Where is my daughter? Why doesn't she answer her phone?--through the horror of the loss of a child through an act of violence,this book pulls you along on a devastating journey that is every parent's worst fear.
From the reception line at the funeral home, through the trial of the criminal and all the way to the ending "stubborn sun,/choosing to rise,/like it did yesterday,/"This book takes you deep into the soul of a mother experiencing the worst that life could ever have to offer her and her child.
I will not ever look at a ladybug again without seeing the shining smile of Leidy Sheeder Bonanno.
Please, if you love the written word and appreciate the ways in which it can introduce you into the very soul of a stranger, read this book.

As the news cycle sensationalizes another death of yet another young woman, Annie Le from Yale, I read Slamming Open the Door. This book is a brave and stark reminder of grief beyond headlines and grief that has been complicated by headlines. This is poetry that doesn't look away, doesn't leap to abstraction. It is a gorgeous testament, an important narrative. Poetry was probably the only way to tell this "story" and Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno has dug deep, shaping some truly amazing verse. These poems are much more relevant than the news.

Amazing articulation of life in the midst of pain. Wise. Re-readable and the sort of thing you might slip into the hands of a friend in turmoil. All us readers owe Bonanno.

These poems are painful, beautiful, moving, personal but accessible. The title poem sends chills every time I read it.

Amazing is the only word I can think of using, to review this book. If you have never been into poems this book will change you forever. I've read it a million times and it only gets deeper into my soul. I am so sorry for her loss, and wish it never happened. Reading these poems touched my humanity.