Gnawed Bones: Poems
by Peggy Shumaker
Red Hen Press • 2010 $19.95
I’m no longer guessing. Her new book, “Gnawed Bones,” is a vivid reminder that Shumaker is a gifted poet who uses words the way they were meant to be used.
The poems in this volume depict Alaska, Hawaii and the desert, three seemingly disparate subjects that actually have much in common. Vast emptiness, unique wild and plant life, climates that require adaptation. All are places that bring us outside ourselves, pull us from the egocentric being most humans live.
But there are quite a few personal poems as well, some reminiscent of the memoir, others depicting scenes and incidents from her childhood. There are a number of poems detailing the illness and death of her father, which are heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. All are obviously an attempt to understand who she is by uncoiling and analyzing bits of data dredged up from her past.
That’s the power of poetry, for both the poet and the reader. Whereas prose has rules relating to structure and order, poetry is freer, allowing for more stream-of-consciousness pondering, which is how most of us process the world around us. Shumaker uses this form well, leading the reader through her thoughts in a way that connects with us, making us say quietly, “I thought I was the only one who felt that way.”
Shumaker uses words like an artist uses paint. Color, meaning, innuendo and exclamation mingle, creating new colors, new nuances, new ways of seeing familiar objects. And her juxtapositions — pairing two seemingly contradictory things or concepts in ways that point out the similarities — are extraordinary.
Take the title poem.
“If language is bones, hard parts
of speech, what do skulls of pack rats
crushed into owl pellets
have to tell us?”
As a word aficionado myself, I would never have thought to equate bones and words. And yet, in Shumaker’s skilled hands, the parallel seems so obvious.
The final stanzas offer wisdom beyond wise, offering an answer to the question we all sometimes ask: “Why am I here?”
“If every day
re-enacts creation,
if we live
here, now
in the first world,
and the last,
let us speak
in our bones
languages of water
from all skies, from
deep underground.
Let our bones quench
the thirst of history,
thirst for all we yearn
to sip, marrow
of each dry tongue.”
Some of the poems bring me back to “Just Breathe Normally,” the efforts of a poet to make sense of a life-altering, life-threatening accident. “Naming What We Hold In Our Hand” starts with a list of simple, everyday objects, making the reader wonder where it’s going. Then we read:
“So far
the signals
from fingertips
to brain
to lips,
wild leaps
electrical
chemical.”
Ah, now I see. Trying to get the body to work again.
“What could be
more simple?
Until the day
we cannot…”
Simple and yet complex at the same time. But if you’ve ever had a medical condition that interfered with movement or life in general, it resonates loudly. And again, we sigh in relief, knowing we aren’t alone.
But Shumaker isn’t all gloom and doom and depression. “Mother Tongue, “The Aroma of Rain in the Desert” and “Mango,” while not light and fluffy, add a luminosity to the book, bringing balance to life and living, just as none of our own lives are all darkness or sunshine.
As I said in my last review, Shumaker has a haunting, lyrical quality to her writing. Her words flow and tumble down the page, like a bubbling river traveling down a mountain, eddying past rocks and swirling with the currents.
For poetry lovers, this is an excellent addition to the library. It is a well-written example of the best way to use the rich language we speak. For those new to poetry, this is a superb introduction. It’s not simplistic; it takes some thought and introspection. But it’s poetry at its best, and that’s an adventure everyone deserves.
Libbie Martin is a freelance writer who lives in Fairbanks. She can be reached at martinlibbie@yahoo.com.
Gnawed Bones: Poems
by Peggy Shumaker
Red Hen Press • 2010 $19.95
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