Reviewer: Sharon Brunner
Eleen Lord’s book Vigil: Poems captures the nuances of everyday life and its vast array of emotions. Lord portrays an early December morning and how cold suspends time. She pictured an old cabin which was currently empty and memories such as counting the time between lightening strikes and walking on a frozen lake. Lord mentioned the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.) on several occasions throughout the book She told a story about a stoic farmer who liked to share his harvest of tomatoes and how her garden was neglected since the death of her husband. The hungry ghosts of the past enounced in each poem as she embraced many of the nuances of beloved recollections.
Some of the themes that came to mind were grief and precious memories. Her poem on page 46 called “Vigil” described how she watched her brother die. He slowly died each hour, his body betrayed him. Her poem “Cemetery Walk” on page 47 portrayed how grief had taken over. I like how she stated that many voices ride this wind. She spoke of voices for some of her other poems. Do the dead talk to us? Each poem spoke as a concert of moods such as sadness and grief. Her poems were moving and struck a cord of a variety of feelings when she delineated precious memories. In her poem Motorcycles For Sale: Best Offer she described how a man died too early, he was in touch with the seasons and how he loved life. Lord described begotten remembrances of a cabin that stood empty, and the memories associated with the cabin. I was moved when I read this line
“Now in the quiet blue hour, I remember how he looked in the early years – that surge of fire that burned and burned.”
I can relate to this book in so many ways. I was at the nursing home visiting my mother the day she took her last breath. How she laid there not realizing I was even in the room. I was sad and flooded with so many memories. Places in which I spent a lot of time at such as my aunt and uncle’s home and now they are gone. My aunt and I would talk for hours and my uncle was so talented when he played the piano. He would show me pictures from the past and ask me to identify the person in the picture. I really miss them. I can also relate to the pain of loss and the remembrance of so many memories. I played outdoors a lot and spent time catching Monarch butterflies and watched them in the glass jars. A similar situation was described in this book.
The movie that came to mind when reading this book was the 1983 movie “Terms of Endearment” in which a mother-daughter relationship covered several decades and about the mother’s battle with cancer. A poem book came to mind “nia to go there” by matwan ci. She described origins of growing up at Turtle Mountain reservation and the stillness and shadows of the moment. Like Lord she addressed the past and the book delineated painful experiences.
I recommend Vigil: Poems for its raw and silent moments, because of its sanctity for human emotions, for its thought provoking exploration into the human psyche and for the unveiling of otherwise undetected new dimensions. In her poem on page 44 Family Heirloom Lord colorfully defined a family with a father and grandfather who has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how his grandson wanted to borrow his trombone. The elder was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.) and he fit the description of many U.P. men. She delineated a ghost of a matriarch and how she could not abide by the thoughts in her head. Dreams, obsessions, burning and war zones were just a few of Lord’s litanies of countless expressions of life’s trials and tribulations she wrote as a talented story teller and poet.
Author: Ellen Lord
Tttle: Vigil: Poems
