Welter's Bookshelf
MWBOOKREVW
In the Heart of the Forest
Diana Randolph
Savage Press
PO Box 115, Superior, WI 54880
1-886028-38-9 $7.95 24pp, cardstock cover, color print
Reading the poetry of Diana Randolph can be like looking at one of her
pastels. There is a sense of transformation. The reader sees both a stillness
and an intricacy of motion. The reader sees that the words are down to earth
and yet also transformational. The mind's eye sees both realism and a spiritual
essence that holds the landscape together. It is as if she works with the elfin
energy we use to discover the natural world when we are children and magically
inscribes it both word and pastel.
In her debut chapbook, In The Heart Of The Forest, we are treated to both:
color-copy pastels alongside poems. The pastels depict many northern Wisconsin
scenes, especially those of winter. Deciduous leaves carouseling through the
sky, sun-warmed ponies, shadows sweeping the forest floor, every pastel gives
its page motion. With their blues, greens and shaded hues, each pastel
compliments a corresponding poem. Yet, no poem in the book is an ekphrasis of
it's picture.
Diana Randolph has also mastered her poetry. In "Through the Eyes of
Dawn", a female pine grosbeak defies a minus 25 degree winter day. Randolph
juxtaposes the poem's images, opening with the bird's call cracking the frozen
air. She ends it with sunflower seeds from the feeder, "…peppering/ the white
frozen earth." It's black and white, but simultaneously hot and burning into
the snow. This example shows how Randolph ends many of her poems. There is a
metamorphosis, an unseen change of energy that takes you off the page. She does
this again in the first stanza of "The Path of a Mouse", when she writes,
"Curiosity nudges me/ to follow/ the path that would be/ invisible in summer."
She tracks the mouse to its winter lair and turns the energy around, deciding
to turn away, "…leaving the sheltering umbrella/ of warmth/ intact."
Whether it is watching her husband blow bubbles at minus 35, or watching
birds gather about her dog at minus 30 or hearing the wind gather under her
jacket as she cross-country skis, all of these poems revel in winter. It is not
surprising to find out that winter is Randolph's favorite season. What is
surprising to find is a book of poetry about winter that is not about death,
loneliness and isolation. To the contrary, this book makes winter synonymous to
joy. From a "…popsicle blue sky" to "…an inner child radiating on a winter
day.", Randolph's images are tastier than St. John's Wort.
Matt Welter
Reviewer
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