"Portal" by Margaret Stone

LATE by Cecilia Woloch, BOA Editions, Ltd. © 2003
ISBN: 1929918429
***
Review by Bridget Kelley-Lossada

There is so much to lose that we haven't lost.

Cecilia Woloch is a poet who understands the strange dichotomy of human suffering: that pain and beauty are inseparable. In her most recent collection, Late, she expresses the beauty of grief and loss in such a way that the reading experience is cathartic. In the opening poem Woloch directs the reader to the possibility of transcending pain: even suffering shimmers and means. She encourages the reader to believe what the narrator is seeing how she experiences emotion, image, and the world. This noteworthy collection compels the reader not only to enter the poet's world, but also to consider the potential loveliness of mortality: that all humans are fragile and at the same time luminous:

[…]How they've covered the mirrors with sheets so he won't have to see himself like this. How my mother and sister lean over him, turning him, bathing him, laughing out loud. How he kisses the hand that dabs his mouth, calls LaVerne, LaVerne, whispers beautiful.

Late also hearkens back to the ancient instinct of poetry as prayer. Woloch stares into world and universe and calls out to the gods in reverence, despair, grief and ecstasy. The poet becomes priestess. In this case the god she invokes is her father in his many forms: the beautiful machine of a car, the wind rustling in the branches of a tree, the last lines of a poem, and finally, as father of the poet. He is everywhere in this collection of stunning grief and beautiful loss:

At the end of the world, you would stand beside me saying, This is my daughter, still. And I would not be afraid to be stepping from that edge into the wind.

Late resonates in the subconscious like a waking dream and offers a deep wisdom to those who seek. The poems are steeped in the mystery of the present, the past, and afterlife. They glow. The simple act of opening the book permits the reader to steal a glimpse of something sacred, something that comes from another world:

Eternity's comfortless, some poet speaks
through the whisper of pages, rock, hard ground,
and no gods anymore, but he breathes

in the darkness beside me, and stirs in his dreams,
whom I've dreamed from the branches, sky, at last-
he's come down for me from the trees,
not a god anymore, and he breathes.

Woloch is an artful poet, bringing more to the page than mere personal narrative and reflection. Her poems are infused with a profound magic that presents the reader with hidden truths of our inhabitance on earth: everything is alive-the trees, the rocks, the birds, and the gods. What's more, they are listening: Crow, I cried. I need to talk to you. / The whole sky lurched. This authentic dialog between Woloch and the spirits occupying the collection is what makes all the heartache and loss tolerable:

[…]I've dragged my grief across the map you spread out tenderly, and look: I'm facing a window facing a river facing cliffs you never saw.

Finally, the true power of Late is that loss is bearable, and there doesn't have to be an end to life. In calling out to the late father she allows him to return to earth, even gives him voice to speak of the secrets of after world. The reader finds that the father lives after all, transcending the permanence of death:

I looked down at the words on the page, read them silently, read them again: When I am dead, even then…I will wait for you in these poems.

BIO: Bridget Kelley-Lossada has served as the interim poetry editor at Moondance for the last two issues and has been the assistant poetry editor for several years. She earned her MFA in poetry from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including, Inkwell, 51%, Moondance, and A Pagan's Muse. She lives and teaches in Los Angeles. Email: bkl1369-lossada@yahoo.com