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 The title gives a clue to the tone of this collection. Departure, parting and the ultimate separation, death, occupy the forefront of these poems. There is a substratum of suppressed narrative in that each poem presupposes an untold story with which an individual poem resonates.
Reviewed by Bob Williams
Departures
by Linda Benninghoff
March Street Press 2004, ISBN 1-59661-011-5, $9.00, 39 pages
This is an unusually handsome chapbook, perfect bound instead of saddle stitched and with fourteen photographs by Robert Bixby, editor of March Street Press. These have been cleverly manipulated to be textured, impressionistically lacking in detail and inviting to the lingering eye. There are nineteen poems and these range in length from a dozen lines to over two pages.
This is the second chapbook of Linda Benninghoff whose work has appeared in numerous publications. She is a graduate of John Hopkins University and SUNY at Stony Brook. She is involved also in animal rights. She has in addition to her chapbooks translated ‘The Seafarer’ and the translation is available at www.electrato.com, under Dialogue of Nations through Poetry in Translation. This has the merit of completeness and is a distinct improvement over the gnarly version by Ezra Pound.
The title gives a clue to the tone of this collection. Departure, parting and the ultimate separation, death, occupy the forefront of these poems. There is a substratum of suppressed narrative in that each poem presupposes an untold story with which an individual poem resonates. The language is appropriately sober and uncomplex. It has the ease of narrative but the interest and difficulty of a story untold but which can to a degree be guessed. The position of the poems between the extremes of fact and emotion is nicely calculated.
Benninghoff is technically assured and does some dangerous things. This is the opening of the longest poem, ‘There is no stillness.’
There is no stillness
in the room we left empty.
The broken kettle
does not sputter like an engine,
and Michael
who one day wore drag
the next left for Kentucky
on a job
checking air conditioners
with a waitress
he’d picked up
the night before,
to marry, is gone.
Here, boys and girls, is the violation of all those things that we learned at our mother’s knee about proper word order but how effective it is, how cubist in effect.
Some of the lines, because they are members of a secret narrative, slip into prose of notable flatness but the sustained ability to produce phrases with words of the correct weight and color is observed solicitously. The shortness of the lines makes this kind of verbal measurement especially critical.
This is work of quality and of interest to all who love poetry. Although somewhat tentative in its engagements, it will repay attention and perusal.
About the Reviewer: Bob Williams is retired and lives in a small town with his wife, dogs and a cat. He has been collecting books all his life, and has done freelance writing, mostly on classical music. His principal interests are James Joyce, Jane Austen and Homer. His book Joyce Country, a guide to persons and places, can be accessed at: http://www.grand-teton.com/service/Persons_Places
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