Book Reviews
Windows
of
Snow
by
Elizabeth
Revere
Poems
of
strange
presences
tangles
with
family
relationships
and
perplexed
emotions
"I am very pleased to have this collection of Elizabeth Revere's poems. The book is handsomely produced; the front cover is a reproduction of one of her eerie paintings, the tone and mood matching those of the poems.
"These poems are odd, oblique and often strike the very heart. They are poems of distance, sorrow and strange presences. The images shift and change abruptly and decisively, the poems are infused with a claustrophobic sense of the past, of tangled lines of family relationships, of perplexed emotions.
"In 'Lilacs,' for instance, the speaker has 'no hands to keep / yu still, no butterfly / to touch your tangled / arms.' We don't know who 'you' are, although he or she seems to be a family member; the next stanza speaks of great grandfather, whose 'house drops its shingles.' The old, deteriorating house is an image of pain and loss: 'Grass sweeps up round / it, and dark windows / breathe.' We readers do not know the players or the plot, but the scene is well established, and the mood a resonance of loss. The last stanza reads:
Fallen limbs bleach
with faces of children.
and veiled on the trellis
lilacs are ghosts
pale lilacs, pale lilacs.
"This is a world where nothing is only itself, but resonates with reflections of other beings, a world where things mingle, merge, and exchange identities.
"It is a haunted world, an occult world, the same New England prowled by Hawthorne's strange peddlers and tormented consciences, by Emily Dickenson's minute precisions, by explorers of the psychic.
"It is not, for me, an appealing world, but it is compelling and memorable. And it is not all darkness and hidden presence. 'March Snow' imagines a deer's responses to a spring snowfall, and expresses a waiting for the future, for newness:
The willow throws
down its yellow
hair and waits for
the bluebird.
"And yet, even here, nature in the willow is endowed with a disquieting feminine presence.
"Elizabeth Revere's poems are populated with people, sometimes named in the title ('My Father Can You See Me,' 'The Holly Tree, for Ann,' 'Mother,' 'Marie,' and 'Jenny,' among others), and sometimes simply addressed as 'you' in the poem. These poems are not focused on the poet herself, but on the world she experiences and its people.
"Technically, Elizabeth Revere writes free verse, but somehow the label seems inaccurate. Her own sense is that, far from being 'free,' her versification is dictated by the subject of the poem and her strong response to it. I do not know what a careful analysis would reveal, and such analysis seems out of place. Her poems are well-made, however. Two stanzas, the first and last, from 'My Father Can You See Me,' illustrate her tone and techniques well.
The meadow's golden under my
feet. I'm a shadow
I can't look back
it's my flesh.
The house has mist on its panes,
My father can you see your
misty child beside you
by the tree?
--Eugene Warren, Christianity and Literature
"... The 78-page, softbound book is a most attractive print job. The cover, in various shades of grey, presents the reproduction of a painting by the author, 'Forgotten,' showing the ruin of a Gothic church or castle, framing two large openings that once were windows, standing on a craggy hillside. In the right foreground is a gnarled, leafless tree -- and both the tree and the "forgotten" relic of a once noble structure are covered with snow.
"It's a dour scene, perhaps, but it serves as a poignant prologue and guidepost to the poems within the little book. If you gaze intently at the picture you will find (as I did) at least eight ghosts guarding the windows, arches and towers and beckoning yu to the mystic land, created by the poet where houses and alleged inanimate things have souls and can communicate with sensitive mortals.
"Ruth's pen name, as the cover indicates, is 'Elizabeth Revere' -- but, in truth, it's more than a pseudonym, for her full name is 'Ruth Elizabeth Revere Raby'!
"The book also contains a striking photograph of RERR, plus biographical notes; a foreword by Professor Herbert R. Coursen who guided and encouraged the poet when she was learning her craft; and the back cover is devoted to a photo by RERR of First Justice John Jay's mansion, built by his son Peter, since, as Coursen writes, "Elizabeth Revere's world is full of old houses, now abandoned ... and the ghosts of our ancestors remembered with the fulfillment of a grandmother's 'molasses cookies.' "
"As for the 63 poems: To enjoy them thoroughly the reader must accept their mystic parameters and metaphysical abstractions that embrace elaborate subtleties of thought and expression. He must accept the poets belief in animism and that there can be 'sermons in stones and books in the running brooks,' and he must hone his perceptions.
"RERR lends common words new dimensions, new nuances. Reading her poems is a challenge that's worth accepting, but don't expect to find complete understanding on the first go-around!
"All of you who remember the stunning land and seascapes that Ruth Raby painted in oil during the 1950s and '60s, will find, I'm sure, a relationship between them and the poems in this collection which she started writing in the early 1970s. Like "Forgotten," which graces the front cover of Windows of Snow, many of them lamented past glories or revealed storm-tossed sailing ships, cresting waves and ominous, rocky shores. Her paintings were as melodramatic as Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman," and very greatly admired when hung in Art Society of Old Greenwich shows and one-man exhibits in local banks.
"RERR's poems ... are ... most impressive in their emphasis on tragedies known by human beings." --Wake Hartley, Village Gazette
"[Revere]
...
writes
of
old
houses
peopled
with
ghosts,
of
relatives
remembered,
of
the
mystic
experiences
one
can
feel
on
the
water
or
at
its
edge.
Out
of
contemporary
events
as
yard
sales
or
the
traffic
on
Sound
Beach
Avenue,
she
draws
insights
that
tell
us
about
the
subjects
of
her
poems
and
also
about
ourselves.
As
you
read
her
verse,
a
slight
mist
seems
to
be
moving
across
the
page,
obscuring
the
present
and
evoking
the
past.
...
her
identity
is
clearly
established
in
the
handsomely
printed
volume,
which
also
exhibits
her
other
talents,
with
one
of
her
paintings
on
the
cover."
--Pyke
Johnson
Jr.,
Greenwich
Time
Pyke
Johnson
Jr.
is
former
managing
editor
of
Doubleday.
