Book Review

I once stood spellbound watching a dog-rose petal falling through a bramble bush. Diverted in its descent by thorns, it fell with delicacy and grace through what seemed like an eternity. It is an image that has stayed with me, as it suggested at the time something of tremendous importance; something which to this day I cannot get near to defining. It would seem that Mark Irwin in this, his thirteenth collection of poetry, is no stranger to the indefinable spirituality that such a scene invokes.

It’s a very specific order of spirituality, one that is closely aligned with Nature and which allows us moments of revelation, briefly opening a door to what might be. In the poem “What if?” Irwin, in that nicely allusive way he has, gives us a rather wonderful example:

. . . What if that bee slowed

by frost on the autumn sill is just waiting for the light

to become the exact length to open its body?

But concerns of an existential threat to these opportunities are very real, and they inform a good many of the poems here; indeed, they form the backbone of the collection as a whole. Even so, you will find no hectoring within these pages, no raised voices, merely the suggestion of urgency by a poet confident in the use of all the tools available to someone of his experience. Mountains call forth and daffodils babble through spring snow; trees are buzzing with birds and Pinyon jays parachute among pines. But life is ephemeral, “brief and unlasting like the iris’ flag unfolded,” and we are gently reminded that these exemplars might one day, maybe sooner than we think, become only memories.

If you take nothing else from this collection, it is implied, let it be that you seize on those opportunities as they come along and nurse them, gaining their gift of compensation while you still can, and making every effort to preserve their genesis. One particularly rueful poem stands out in that it gathers all the threads to pretty well sum up the ethos of Once When Green. It begins with the line “In wind we are living. What is it telling us with all its breaths and stories?” which to me is almost a poem in itself. Here, it is a wind that tells of a child being carried on his father’s shoulder; of camp fires being made throwing shadows from adolescent faces; of magazines and newspapers flying through an opened window. And then we are asked to look into an empty urn and discover there is no wind; no wind to witness the loss of pandas, salamanders, manatees and wolves. Finally, the question is posed: How will we name their ghosts?

. . . Will you become a bridge to save them?—Like

the man who burns his small boat on shore when the fish

are gone—the bluegill and bass—and then disappears into the whistling

trees, then into a city’s streets where he sleeps in a box

—a bridge like that, blowing apart

Loss, in a more personal sense, is tenderly conveyed in a quietly composed piece where the narrator, after recalling a particularly affecting dream, is finding it difficult to complete the poem “as I push harder and harder on a pencil that leaves no words.” And again, in a poem wondering at the passage of time, he remembers a last farewell, then:

three months later—now thirty years—fingerprints on a doorjamb, and some

dandelions, their globed heads dusk-filled around a grave.

Invention and an easy lyricism combine in an intriguing little poem beginning: “I want to write the book that comes undone and flies apart / like snow through the last pages . . .” Open to interpretation, it appears to describe a book that blows away the restrictions of time, and welcomes the cleansing winds of imagination and opportunity. It goes on to tell of a book with roots spreading from each word, and out of this book a tree will grow whose:

spring and autumn are one, greening buds and yellow

leaves going ruddy then brown at once through the swarming

cloud of snow, sunlit, its nascent pages lost with the names of all you love.

It’s a piece whose feel transcends the literal—a characteristic of a good many of the poems here. But I was struck too by the delightfully transparent “Look,” where we are invited to picture a Mexican man and his six-year-old daughter performing for food, or money for a hotel room. His playing of the accordion “. . . turns a Colorado strip mall into a street on the Left Bank / of Paris” while the little girl, in a sunflower dress, dances. After cheering the tired and careworn faces of those passing by, he will close up his instrument, pick up the takings and:

they will camp by the river whose gold light will make their bodies and faces

invisible while a radiance surges through the full current of their lives.

Unclouded and warm, it may not be to everyone’s taste, but to this reader at least it works in that, as the title suggests, it merely asks us to look upon a touching scene; a scene painted with compassion and no little skill.

The few poems I’ve chosen to write about from this nicely curated selection barely touch the surface, but perhaps are representative of the balance here, and give some idea of the poet’s range and undoubted gifts. The tone throughout is one of concern but never heavily pessimistic; beautifully imagined, but always clear in its intentions. Thoughtful and convincing, Once When Green is a work of informed maturity constructed with language both lively and precise. Mark Irwin is a poet through and through, and the persuasive imagery he spills, like memorabilia from a biscuit tin, will concern and delight in equal measure. It’s a collection you will want to return to again and again if only for a little consolation, or a taste of what might be.