From The Smoking Poet
Book Review by Zinta Aistars
Secret Leopard: New & Selected Poems 1974-2005 by Rosemary Nissen-Wade
Softcover
124 pages
Publisher: Alyscamps Press, 2005
ISBN: 0-9764509-1-7
The Australian poet Rosemary Nissen-Wade writes in her poem titled, “Crossing the Great Water:”
Words are such useless things
compared with the touch of a hand,
a smiling mouth, a soft eye…
Useless things, words. But all we have
when we live so distant.
All that we have to cross
the great spaces of air and ocean
lengthening between us.
But Nissen-Wade has taken those “useless words” and given them wings to cross the space between the poet and the reader. In an extensive collection of poetry written over a span of more than 30 years, we are witness to the poet’s literary growth. Her topics are large and timeless, yet Nissen-Wade brings them home to the individual reader in the everyday, unadorned words we all know, and with words that reach to the hidden heart, where large things live: love, death, faith, hope — and just in time, without waste, aimed true. In “Supreme Compliment,” she writes:
I miss one lover.
Easy man, unfurling
as a fronded fern to sip the sun
leisurely
uncontrived.
Revealed:
The fragile core firming,
stretching alive. Sensitive
in touch and movement,
playfully intent.
He made love like a woman.
The whole person.
In admirable economy of words, Nissen-Wade sums up the wish of women everywhere, the struggle for what satisfies and lasts, the largesse of love for person from person, without a hint of unnecessary drama, no soapbox in sight, no garish decoration, because none is needed. This is the lover she misses, this one, and none of the others. In that, saying it all.
Other near perfect poems are “Incarnation” (“What ancient wind now sucks and cries/at our stones and walled places?”), “Autumn” (“lost faces/drifting on memory”), and again the stunning economy of words expressing something nearly too big for words in “The Same Valleys” (“I’m with you and alone, it’s quiet, my outline fills”). Nissen-Wade’s talent is in using the bare bones of big ideas and letting the reader fill in their own outlines with the echo of their own experiences. She says, simply, what we suddenly recognize we have been trying and trying to say all along, now only gasp in recognition: yes! That’s it… exactly.
An occasional miss, as in “Writing the Prison” or a section called “From Small Poems of April, 1991” that could be eliminated entirely without lessening the value of the whole, doesn’t keep this collection from being an overall poetic goldmine. Even in that obligatory poem every poet seems to eventually write in some version about writing itself, Nissen-Wade’s “Always the Writing” is fresh and personal. The collection concludes with a fitting series of goodbye poems, written about the poet’s mother and a friend named Karen, observing and capturing the process of human disintegration without melodrama or pity.
“…Each word brings me/closer to the edge of being singular,/discovering my own pains and rewards…”
It takes courage to take on the turning points of life, the rites of passage, but what else truly matters? Nissen-Wade has not only the courage, but the skill and talent to do so successfully.
From The Smoking Poet
Book Review by Zinta Aistars
Jorell
* Softcover, 112 pages
* Publisher: 1st ed. Aust. Booksellers Assoc.,
2nd ed. Life Magic
* ISBN: 978-0-9752485-1-5
“For those who believe in fairies .... and those who don’t.”
Fairies... do I believe in them? I had to wonder as I read this slim book by Andrew E. Wade, an Australian author. I wasn’t sure into which category I land, believer or non. Surely I believed as a child? And I remember well how my own children believed when they were small, peeking into bushes, checking behind tree leaves, listening to the rustling in the wind. Perhaps I fall into the group of those who want to believe...
Whatever your outlook on fairies, anyone can enjoy the story of Jorell. She is a tiny fairy in Australian woods who guards the forest, but also seems to keep a kind eye out for the occasional good human who wanders into her woods. Eight-year-old Tim is one of those humans. Jorell is taken by surprise when the boy can, in fact, see her, as few humans can. Certainly not as they grow older, inhibited by their own disbelief, their own “unreadiness” to open their eyes and see. But once the two have established that they can indeed interact, and they become comfortable with “mind-talking,” or telepathy, as the preferred mode of communication, it turns out they can help each other in a collaboration between species.
Little Tim’s father, as it turns out, works at the nearby sawmill, and the story of Jorell takes on an environmental message. It is not a simple problem with a simple solution. The loggers are sawing down an old-growth forest. But to save the forest would mean putting many out of work. Add to that Tim’s problem with convincing his father, a very rational and logical man who doesn’t believe in such as fairies, and the conflict of the story is set up.
It is no easier for fairies to believe in good humans. Jorell must convince her own kind to trust them to help in saving the forest:
“...why do you trust him? He has no understanding of us. He and his [human] kind are upsetting the balance of nature - cutting and burning trees, polluting the air, destroying the animals, turning the land into desert, blasting great wounds into the hills and mountains, and forcing more and more of us to withdraw to the forests. What makes this manchild different?
“All that you have said is true, Kraw. I do not excuse what has and is still being done. But humanity is not evil. Most humans are peaceful, loving and kind. They want to live in friendship. It is easy to see the bad deeds, less easy to see the good ones. If we give up, not trusting in the power of love, we are lost...”
A strong message, and true. But will it be enough? And in time? Tim must convince his cynic father of the life in the forest, but he must also come to understand that jobs without a healthy environment are meaningless. He must also convince his young classmates at school, and his teacher, to assist in this effort. Fairy and manchild are fully dependent on each other to solve a shared problem.
This is a charming tale with an important message, suitable for young children, but enjoyable for an adult who perhaps enjoys reading to children. The language is pretty bare bone, the dialogue a tad stilted and unadorned with the detail that might truly bring the scene to life, nevertheless, the merits outweigh these shortcomings.
To learn more about the author and his own experiences with a fairy named Jorell, inspiration for this tale, visit Andrew and his wife Rosemary's blog, The Truth About Fairies.
