Customer Reviews

Telling Tales of Dusk

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What do a Ferris wheel, a motel sign, a roadside diner, and a bay window have in common? In Telling Tales of Dusk by Terri Kirby Erickson, they are all sources of light, literal means and transformative symbols of salvation in the poems "County Fair," "Star Lite Motel," "Betty's Roadside Diner," and "Saving Grace," respectively.

And perhaps salvation is what poetry is all about, redeeming the finer details of life by imbuing them with the value of memory, finding meaning in what we might otherwise all too easily deem meaningless. As Williams helped us realize just how much did depend upon a red wheelbarrow, Erickson finds meaning in how "Queen Anne's lace dandies up a ditch" ("Queen Anne's Lace"), in how an old woman's moaning is like the wind "when it whips / around a house, rattling windows, / searching for cracks," ("Assisted Living") searching, in other words, for ways in, much the same way this woman searches for her way into another world, one of peace, reunion, and clarity.

The speaker of that poem in her unforgettable search for what is inexplicably missing from her world is only the first of a number of remarkable portraits gathered in this collection. There is also the lonely man in "The Speckled Trout Café," the illiterate preacher who builds his sermons on the scripture read to him by his less faithful wife "the words warmed / by her breath and scattered into his / brain like dandelion seeds" in "Papa Never Learned to Read," and the blues guitarist in "Delta Blues" who, the speaker comments, "should roll a stone / over hurt that deep, but" instead lifts "it up like Lazarus for anybody / lucky enough to listen."

These portraits and simple symbols of salvation add up to a memorable second collection of work on their own, but the reader should be careful not to be fooled by the apparent simplicity of these poems, for just as still waters run deepest, the greatest revelations are often expressed in the fewest words. I, for one, am a fan of understatement, something often achieved in poetry through the metaphysical, poems which, as Dickinson encouraged, "tell all the truth but tell it slant." In "Smoke and Mirrors," for example, Erickson doesn't spell out her warning of how a teleological obsession with the prize indiscriminately dissolves all else from our focus, good and bad, superfluous and necessary. Instead she shows only how the call of a longed-for boy affects the perception of a young girl: "The boy / I was talking to dissolved, tablet-like, / in the watered down scenery of the things / that were not you." Similarly, in "Daisy Chain," she presents the image of four little girls "daisy chained" to their mother to illustrate "belonging so / palpable, it beat like heart / on the pavement."

Just as these poems are satisfying in their surface-level imagery but tricky in their larger or deeper implications, so too is the book as a whole. There are plenty of poems that seem trivial, merely descriptive, but taken together, they are subtly effective, quietly teaching the reader to reach deeper into the everyday image to recognize and value significance. In other words, they lull you into such comfort that when you finally begin to cry while reading "Blue Hydrangeas," you realize the poems have taught you the empathy needed to feel this deeply for someone you've never known and that you're not crying just for the speaker of this poem, who reminds us that as long as we are able to love anything our capacity to love ourselves remains, but for all the speakers of all the poems and the wonderfully vital world in which they live, the same world you realize in which you live.

I'd suppose it was about 35 years ago on a Christmas Eve when I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette during a snowfall. In wonder, there was silent lightning above the clouds. I think the unsmoked butt burned my knuckles. Long since thought forgotten, the uncanny beauty of that night returned when I read Terri Kirby Erickson's remarkable book of poems, "Telling Tales of Dusk."

These verses are alternately earthy and ethereal, carefully wrought with a delicate hand and fingers that appear to know how to make fists. A lone tree-rat becomes as slender and precious as a Ming vase in 'Squirrel'. A cat-head biscuit - sharecropper's grub - and three eggs in a country café becomes the history of the world in fast-forward. Many of Ms. Erickson's wonderful poems revolve around such seemingly off-handed details, but her voice is always elegant and carefully distilled. And I think: this is the trick that Yeats pulled, isn't it?

In 'Granddaddy's Ghost' the poet remembers her mother, a girl herself then, in the kitchen as the poet's grandfather is stricken and dies. His ghost, his soul, becomes the wispy smoke from a pot of beans scorching on the stove while the living tend to the dead "as if he heard his little girl cry and came running". Such calm and cautiously chosen words suggest years of thought and discernment.

With 'Lilacs' she describes her husband being asked by the undertaker's removal men in suits to hold his father's head, and guesses how very heavy it must have been, but concludes you made him seem light as flowers/ as if you were a small boy holding/lilacs, careful not to crush them in your hands.

This is the voice of a witness, and one humble enough to envy the strut of crows.

This is the sight of lightning in a snowstorm. I could recommend no current book of poems more urgently. These poems are gifts to the world.

I can't wait to read this book! Terri Kirby Erickson has a way of bringing a soul home to roost. Her poetry, is indeed her own song and she creates images that catch you on your way through life and make you settle in, be still, and listen to her melodies. In doing so, you can find your own voice again. That is the true gift of a poet. Her inspiration, from her first book "Thread Count", spread to my own life and I am a poet now. Humble to be sure, I write poetry about Donkeys through The Donkey Sanctuary in the UK. Terri's poetry brings a sudden quietness and modesty to the world. I found myself re-enchanted with my memories. Memories that I may not have willingly gotten too close to. I liken Terri's poetry to the loveliness of the writings of Mary Oliver. True poets that create miracles, make you smile at your fears, because you fear nothing.

Telling Tales of Dusk is a wonderful array of words from Terri Kirby Erickson. Like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, the reader never knows what they may get when they turn the page, only that they are assured of a literary delicacy.

Ms. Kirby Erickson's style is fresh, and her way with words is both exquisite as well as accessible. What makes Telling Tales unique is that the poet doesn't limit herself to any specific theme for the whole, and that she is adept at writing on a host of topics, from youth to coming of age, from living to aging to dying and death; of love and love lost; of parenting and of parents and grandparents--all universal themes marked by her own unique voice, at times serious, other times playful, but always lovingly rendered, the result always memorable.

In Snowy Egret, she paints the pure elegance of a bird as a "bride, unsure, or an angel fallen--a convert preparing for baptism;" but leaves us to consider that sometimes in life a thing is only what it is, in this case "simply a bird, a snow-white bird, searching the shallows for fish."

Ms. Kirby effortlessly turns the melancholy in Devotion to sublime; finds love in loss in Lilacs; humor and comfort through pain in Papa Fell Off the Porch; writes of parental admiration in My Father; finds acceptance in A Rancher Buries His Wife; reminds us, in Saving Grace, that the simple things in life are the best; one need not be a mother to appreciate the joy of motherhood in Madison's Picture; takes us to Canal Street in New Orleans to give us a snapshot, in high definition, of a street musician's lost love; and turns September in the South into a love sonnet.

Good poetry becomes great poetry for what the poet often leaves unsaid, and Ms. Kirby Erickson deftly leads the reader to relate to each poem in his or her own way.

This beautiful collection of verse is highly recommended.

Telling Tales of Dusk was a comforting and warm collection that made me feel right at home. The characters in these poems are people I know, the emotions Erikson captures are what I've felt. Without giving too much away, here are some of my favorite parts from the book:

From Butter Mints: "She wore floral patterned dresses with buttons white and round as moons..." I remember full boxes of buttons in my great-grandmothers house, counting and examining each one. And I remember her wearing those floral dresses with large buttons, I can just smell the scent of the old farmhouse with it's little kitchen and treasure-packed attic. From the poem Queen Anne's Lace: "Queen Anne's lace dandies up a ditch, like embroidered hankies in a farmer's pocket." I love that, and it reminds me of how my grandfather still carries an actual handkerchief in his pocket. I adore the classiness and style of men who still carry handkerchiefs. It breaks my heart a little to think in a decade or two that tradition may be lost. From Salesman:"Maybe death is like a door to door salesman. Not the eager boy with spit-shined shoes, but a middle-aged man in a brown Derby hat. His tie is egg-stained and crooked, shirt frayed at the cuffs.Taking note of how tired he looks, face droopy and creased as an old hound dog's, you feel kind of sorry for him, for what he's there to do, but sorrier for yourself--unless you're very sick or in pain, which makes it easier on both of you." The comforting thing about these poems to me is that they are here, preserved in this body of work. Like a painting in emotion. It will last forever, even after we die.

The stronger emotions this book evoked in me were the ones that I can relate to now, being a mother. And an adult daughter. In "Grandaddy's Ghost" I was reminded of a late night phone call when my own mother found out that her father had died, the line "Her knees hit the floor, loud as gunshots." brings me to tears every time I think of it. And in "Time" I could relate to the feeling of desperate elation at finding a lost child, "I found you at the playground, You were laughing, your feet so high in the air, God could have grabbed you easily, by your loose sandal. Instead it was me pulling your off the swing, my arms holding you so tight, you came out the other side of me, grown."

This collection is worth reading, digesting, and then reading again. I count myself one of the lucky ones, having discovered Terri's work.

Terri Kirby Erickson's poetry says what I've always known, thought, and felt but have never been able to express. With her use of imagery and language, she paints "pictures" in the reader's mind that are every bit as lovely as the covers of her books. One of my favorite poems in this collection is Starlight Motel. I've passed the motel several times on my travels up Highway 52 and always wondered what it would be like to stay in such a place.

Terri Erickson is a wonderfully sharp poet who finds ways to convey terrific emotions in order to reveal our own humanity through scenes of ordinary life!

Every poem Terri Kirby Erickson shares with the reader in her poetry books Thread Count and Telling Tales of Dusk is an invitation to join her as she reflects into the past, as she walks in the present, and as she floats into an ethereal world of her own creation. Terri is a wordmaster. Terri is a imagemaster. She wants you to enjoy her poetry, and she writes so that the reader can enjoy it and become a part of it. Which poem is my favorite? I couldn't pick just one as a favorite because that would be unfair to all her other wonderful poetry creations. Thank you, Terri, my dear friend, for your exquisite poetry. With these "works of art" that you have poured from your heart soul and mind, you have opened my heart, soul and mind.
Your friend, Joan Nichols