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This Side of Early

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A woman simply pondering the nature of the world has never been so entertaining. "This Side of Early" is an anthology of poetry from Naomi Ayala, focusing on her beliefs and how she views the spiritual world as the connection between so much of the world from the forests to the vast urban jungle of cities. "This Side of Early" is a fine and fascinating book of verse, recommended. "For You": Meet me where the barn owl/comes about old people we know/and the sky turns/and the bridge between daylight and night/stretches like a clothesline with our words./Our surefootedness, one breath/through earth and sky-/our arms, braided roots./We can sit down with tobacco,/lay our thoughts against the burning stars.

Ayala tweaks common situations with selective imagery and wraps around inner feelings or states; which feelings or states may be imagined (but not imaginary). As in "A Man Buys a Box of Cupcakes," the man is not just buying a box of cupcakes, but, "Above the Leukemia jug/his hands flutter to the mad/order of the unkempt,/stop to feel for another bill--/folded into tiny parts, like a poem/or despair--and/muttering something about hope, he slips it in...." Or in "Visit," where the poet is "five miracles away/from true happiness...[and has] already learned to cry." Foreign words dropped in (e. g., "abuelo [grandmother] took me from her") tweak the circumstances even more. Many of the words are Spanish, and some are Asian associated with spirituality. Such words are not meant to challenge or mystify, as some poets do to give depth to a poem. Alaya does not mean to take the risk of losing the reader. With her, the foreign words are used to give extent to the poems so they democratically, multiculturally embrace a wide diversity of people and circumstances.