You reach a point in your life (notice I said “point,” not “age,” but “age” works, too) when everything reminds you of something. It’s not so much that you realize, in the words from Ecclesiastes, that there’s nothing new under the sun, as much as it is being constantly reminded of something you experienced or someone you knew. It might be the face of the supermarket checker, or the way light and shadow appear on a door, or the smell of flowers. I can smell sweet pea flowers and suddenly I’m eight or nine, sitting by the fence of my friend Paul Brown down the street, playing the Battle card game.
It was that infusion of memory, childhood, and life that kept coming to mind as I read Enormous Blue Umbrella, the new collection by Donna Hilbert. The poems are not a chronological walk from childhood to adulthood. Instead, they are about present things that have been strongly shaped by the past, about how we view the world has deep roots in our earliest memories.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Thursday Readings
Close and Slow: Emily Dickinson’s Poem 599 – Andrew Rycroft at The Sounding Board.
“Winter, My Secret,” poem by Christina Rossetti – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Cold Child – poem by Cora Clark at The New Criterion.
“The Duel,” poem by Eugene Field – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
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