“Faces in a Crowd: Poems” by Mary Harwell Sayler

One thing poetry can do, often better than non-poetic literary forms, is to present images and ideas that challenge our notions of the status quo, of what we believe, and how we understand the reality of the everyday. The 70 poems of Faces in a Crowd, a new collection by Mary Harwell Sayler, does this exceptionally well.

Sometimes, she asks questions directly. “Can you see / that forlorn little boy, alone, / waiting to be remembered / inside the man, / caught now in clouds of anger?” And “What is there to prove / but being for, / not just against?”

Sayler asks the learning questions – who, what, where, when, how, and why. She considers the photojournalist reading herself to death. And she takes on how we understand history, as in this poem:

Artifacts

In school, I learned

of wars and dates

that celebrate

the conqueror’s pride

in victory.

It took me many

years to ask –

to take to task

the conquering side

of plot and story.

Why hide from me

the tapestry

of history

unfolding lots

of peoples, places,

homes?

Let’s celebrate

the victory

of cooking pots

and combs.

Sayler considers the everyday events and realities we all experience – family gatherings, dementia, aging, funerals, new flooring in the kitchen, Halloween costumes, and more. And she turns each into a question, often probing, always on point, leading us to consider that what we see is not necessarily what we understand.

Mary Harrell Sayler

Sayler is the author of some 27 books, including Living in the Nature Poem and Outside Eden: Poems; Christian Poet’s Guide to Writing Poetry; First Days of Parenting; First Days of Retirement; among several others. She blogs at In a Christian Writer’s Life and Poetry Editor and Poetry. 

Many of the poems in this collection were previously published in literary journals and other magazines.

Faces in a Crowd invites us to look beyond the obvious, remove the masks and disguises (and sometimes the blinders), and see our world, and ourselves, as we really are.

Related:

My review of Living in the Nature Poem.

My review of Christian Writer’s Guide.

Wallace Stevens and Walking the Landscape.

Top photograph by Redd Angelo via Upsplash. Used with permission.