5.0 out of 5 stars
The real things ..., October 10, 2000
This review is from: Woman Lake (MVP) (Paperback)
Woman Lake is very reachable and "there" for readers, simple stories about events and observations that usually morph into something deeper and more mysterious. His poems do what poems are supposed to do -- they take something familiar, allow you to examine it in your hands, until you locate the secret inside that makes the object holy or heartbreaking or hilarious.
I hear it in "Hanging Laundry Out to Dry," a poem about his mother -- "the last generation of mothers to make clothes by hand" -- pinning clothes to a line. It seems to be about shirts and sheets and washday, but as you read it, it enfolds you like billowing sailcloth:
I think now
of her lips, the tastes her mouth must
have held over time: wood and steel,
stone and soil, and finally ash.
Hey -- all of life is in those lines, all our striving and eating and dying. And Rich gets to it with a homely memory of his mom in a New Jersey backyard. It is very lovely.
In a companion poem, "Lost in Audubon's Birds of America", Rich thumbs through the old lithographs of birds in their natural habitats -- and suddenly is seeing his father's death:
... the evening
that divides everything into before and after,
as if in dying he fled into this book
to furl his wings in the feather of my eyes.
It is more than melancholy that pulls the poet and reader deeper into these poems. I sense an enormous yearning, in a world of cheap distractions and pretensions, for the things of substance, the real things, the hard-won achievements of those who have gone before, and those who are yet to blossom. One of the nicest poems is this one about his daughter Emma ("Photocopy of My Daughter's Face"). This poem begins as whimsy, which is then put in the service of a parent's terror, the image of one's offspring frozen like a fly pressed in amber. Here is the poem in its entirety:
Young girl, trapped beneath the ice,
What are you trying to tell me?
That life is a cold, deep well,
A series of gray tones
Falling off suddenly into black?
This distortion makes the living
Look and shiver.
How long must you wait, child,
Face pressed against the light?
In what world will you wake up
And take your next breath?
I like very much the unmistakableness of his approach and tone; it's very hard to misread Rich Broderick. He takes care to guide the reader in and through his ideas and images. He's very much a controlling poet in that sense, sure-footed and well-plotted, and he reminds you that poets are supposed to be guides.
Also recommended is a 30-line poem, "Repairing the Five Story Globe," about a replica of our planet on display on the campus where Rich works. Somehow the plastic continents of the globe had come askew, and a girl from the exhibit company was refitting these tectonic sections via a crane. She floats at the end of a cable, restoring the earth to its proper condition. The poem is by turns sexy and mythopoeic:
Dressed in shorts, T-shirt
and climbing boots,
she rappels down the slope
of the Northern Hemisphere
fits one boot into the Yucatan
And commences to set
Jamaica right....
These poems about grandmothers and grandfathers, and mothers and sisters, and daughters and sons, about transoceanic crossings and the still moon over a Minnesota lake, speak to a more complex insight. They say our struggle and suffering reveal both what is heroic in us and the fragility that is our human signature. And what can we do but honor our efforts, and grant safe passage to all departed souls:
They look so peaceful, spinning
and rolling slowly into the arms
of the water, their white limbs folding
and unfolding with the limbs of the river.
I watch until they disappear, until they drift
Out of sight around a distant bend.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
"Woman Lake", December 4, 2002
This review is from: Woman Lake (MVP) (Paperback)
"Woman Lake", a book of poetry by Richard Broderick, is sensitive, nostalgic, and witty. Broderick describes his childhood, family relationships, fatherhood, memories of his parents and grandparents with a zest for the human spirit. A sense of personal loss also echo's throughout the book, as Broderick lost his father and both sets of grandparebts at the age of fourteen. One example is found in "Bully Boy"; Broderick describes himself as "the boy who tried to fill the emptiness with pain.". Friendship is also prevalent in these writings. One can feel the warmth of his memories, playing with the boys in summertime, watching his mother hang the laundry out to dry, and Grandmother's pie-making. This is truely enjoyable reading.
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