The sky disrobes,
draping across the ground
its royal, burgundy gown.
Inside the wounded earth
my dead wait for spring
lips parted open
to love.
The latter half of the chapbook is a grab bag of verses on topics ranging from witchcraft and Greek mythology to snoring
and Parisian romance. The potent, Dakota-inspired “Spirit-Rider” aside, these poems are often little more than playful trifles,
intruding on the more serious tone of the work. The pieces offered in Awakening Indigo at times seem like dispatches
of a poet in transit; perhaps they capture Lundell moving from a spontaneous amateurism to the more refined, confident,
full-blooded work of an accomplished poet.
Gardeners looking for some poetry as they impatiently await their seed catalogues this winter need look no further than Maryann Corbett. Her Gardening in a Time of War contains nary a reference to Iraq or any other violent conflict, but it does linger in the back yard, as titles such as “Asparagus” and “Shrubs for the Northern Garden” attest. She moves indoors as well, with brimming language and a sad, tender humor. In “Old World Charm” she brings a house to life, beginning: “Exactly as she’d feared, when he was gone / the house became despondent,” and ending: “So when they saw that she was all they had, / the faucets wept and would not be consoled.”
Corbett resembles Mary Oliver in her vivid natural observations, laced with a dash of philosophy. From “Suburban Samsara”:
Season finale: last fall, the street was flaked in yellow, flecked with sheet-flame, leaf-gold layering over the lawns. The garden buddhas sat bare-bellied, navel deep in a dreamed nirvana, almost conceding: Not all is suffering.That “almost” is important: Corbett is not a rebel poet, and she never openly attacks Buddhism or any other institution. She is instead a gardening poet, quietly tending a few lines of verse in between trips to Target and watching the leaves turn.
- Joel Van Valin