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What I like best
about the poetry of Susan Schultz is its balance of philosophical and
lyrical/sensory elements, facilitating the attainment of tiers of awareness in
the reader. And Then Something Happened richly rewards the reader with an impeccably deft questioning of the
narrative in concert with full use of its properties.
Poetry this good feels easy. But each return trip to the poems in this volume
yields new dimensions. Beginning with sound/idea, proceeding through tissue
after tissue of evidence, one is treated to a satisfying, even fulfilling
journey at each point of focus. Schultz appears to draw a perception and then
delve deeply into it, finding more, calling the reader's attention to
additional possibilities, posing questions, hypothesizing answers,
continually making use of multiple points of reference.
Exploring the gesture of the narrative becomes a primary subject of And
Then Something Happened, in which
a finely-honed, economical lyricism propels the reader into the discovery of
several surprises. The book begins with a string of declarative sentences
that discovers, reveals, informs, parses, while pressing for a yield of
unanticipated outcomes.
In the year of the snake, rivers
flowed
circuitously to sea: desire
for revenge
filled the populace
with an
inverse longing for balance
at any cost,
like a field of grasses
that appeared
only when the death
camps closed.
Laced with irony and parodic lilt, the poem moves through a litany of
discoveries leading to:
Horoscopes/told of a year of turmoil and strange
happiness, as
of days past grief, the new
world opening
to a redemptive clangor
of carnivals,
now lodged at the city's edge,
where barkers
and clowns called out. One
small child
gave answer, waving from the burnished
frame of
burned out window, her tears
a kind of
reverence expressed as interrogative.
And Then Something Happened
rises to the implicit challenge of being swept up mid-stream-of-events,
evidencing a writer without pretence and wholly in command of a versatile,
deceptively direct style replete with a capacity for unearthing unexpected
layers of complexity that become clear.
A favourite poem is the nine-part 'The Lost Country', in which one is
reminded that 'Quite possibly, memory is the first art.' Susan Schultz uses natural
language to tap into increasingly deeper discoveries. Her narrative functions
as an instrument that deprives us of unquestioned existence. The river
becomes an emblem of narration that Schultz simultaneously uses and
questions.
The philosophical orientation, the depth of the lines, the yield of an
economical word stream, dazzles and appeals to a reader who prefers complete
immersion in the pursuit of thought. Schultz acknowledges the entity of
language, the full power of music, the propulsion of thought allowing itself
to match the potency of formal movement in and through the concept:
. . . nothing
else holds us
together and yet nothing
is so
difficult to remember as pain,
which is like
a lake whose shores
denote the
difference between pain
and what it
teaches us, the art
of
recollection without reliving,
wisdom as the
applied memory
that mediates
between the present
and what
constructed it, the past's most
certain
contingencies . . .
The press of acceptance that fortifies perceived
acceptance of likeness and meta-likeness, surging forward with meaning that
transcends any encapsulation one has suspected might be true or real or
possible.
'Or is there no thinking but in music?' becomes the inevitable question
resonating on many levels. Schultz touches the neck of the violin nerve that
releases as precise a surprise in sonority as a harmonic might do. Her
engagement with language demonstrates a quest for even the mechanics of how
motion, thought, music, and physicality might meet. At what point does the
narrative begin to encompass what defines it?
The near juxtaposition of a litany in language on language that fills Section
III of this poem and Section V's assertion that
. . .
Abstraction
is the mind's
own silence, retreat
from danger,
the predator's cave . . .
remind the reader that tangible tools are being used to ground and release
the attention from the blinders to which it has grown accustomed. The further
acknowledgement that
- how much
easier to write that pronoun
as if by fiat
one could transcend
the
selfishness that still defines us,
self-creation
having no rules
but those we
write as we go along
endorses the process to which the writer is committed, a disciplined and
liberating engagement with thought.
This volume includes both lineated work and prose poems. Of the two, I prefer
the lineated pieces, based upon their relatively lithe nature, more limber in
character than the comparatively dense quality of the prose poems.
The title section of the book exemplifies Schultz's skillful capability of
juxtaposing nature and multiple cultural strands that seem to infect any hope
of a purer reality. Mentions of Homeland Security, John Ashcroft,
institutions, graffiti's truest self, children's stories and programs, the
chant/lament of a broken man, all set in a London location during the year
2002. Schultz reminds us that memory is a constructed thing, possesses
arbitrary elements, and hovers above life force, both before and beyond its
realization. 'That Donald Rumsfeld stars in my friend's poem is not a good
thing' presses perception, follows thought where it traverses.
I recommend this book without reservation. Susan Schultz is a fine poet whose
excellent skill and fine, thoughtful perceptions function to create a
splendid book.
© Sheila E. Murphy 2005
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