Laurie Kolp’s “Upon the Blue Couch: Poems”

Write what you know, the experts say.

As I sat reading the poems that comprise Upon the Blue Couch by Laurie Kolp, the thought kept recurring: She writes what she knows. These are the poems about a life. These are the poems about a life being lived.

And where is life lived? Where most of us live it. The car wash. The doctor’s office. On vacation. Working. Seasonally. Who is it lived with? Spouses. Children. Relatives. The people at church. And how is it lived? With joy and zest and fear and depression and laughter and tears.

Kolp’s poems address all of these subjects and themes, and more. But whatever she turns her eye to, you can be sure it’s where life is lived. Like in the title poem – upon the blue couch.

Upon the Blue Couch

 

Maybe I didn’t write a thing today.

Maybe I sat on this twenty-year-old

muted blue couch and did nothing

but think about the wear and tear

from move after move we’ve been through,

with washed over mars, the scars

of cigarettes and vomit,

having been passed out upon and puked upon,

a shoulder when I needed one

to cry my eyes out upon.

Maybe I remembered all the lovers

who have lied

sprawled upon its pillows

with hungry lips I’ve kissed,

hands upon thighs, breasts upon chest,

all to feel something better than

what was missing in my heart.

Maybe I dreamed about my husband

and all the time we’ve rued upon

blue obsequious fabric,

worrying about the economy we’ve fallen upon—

with curse words or whispers

sometime sat opposite ends,

sometimes hand in hand,

but always with a love

never to be crashed upon.

Maybe I recalled my babies

sleeping upon their daddy

sleeping upon the cushions

as they sought solace in colicky times

and I was too tired to stay awake,

my nipples having been sucked upon

and sipped upon one too many times,

their cracks a small sacrifice

for a lifetime of nourishment.

Maybe I didn’t write a thing today,

but this twenty-year-old blue couch did.

The blue couch is an artifact, and over the course of a life and its own life becomes a repository of memory. But more is happening here then memory. And it has to do with the one word that’s the single most repeated word in the entire poem. (See if you can find it without reading on.)

It’s the preposition, upon. It implies relationship, a physical presence, almost a kind of platform. And that’s what the blue couch becomes – a platform for memory, and memories, both good and bad.

Kolp has published poetry in a number of literary magazines, and is also an accomplished photographer. She’s also a wife, mother of three children, manager of two dogs, and the vice president of the Texas Gulf Coast Writers. She blogs under her own name.

Because Kolp writes of the everyday, she writes of the familiar. These poems and the life they paint are recognizable. We see ourselves in the poems; we share the emotions they evoke; and the life and lives they represent become our lives.

And we, too, find ourselves sitting upon the blue couch, sharing the laughter, the anger and the tears. It is our blue couch, too.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.