Motherland: Poems

Motherland is a testament to Sally Thomas’s mastery of poetic craft, an exquisite book within and without. The poems are every bit as breathtaking as the cover. Thomas writes in richly textured language and a natural, controlled style.I’m drawn in by the evocative settings, like this ponderous seascape:“Saltmarshes’ silver mazes pock with rain.This island’s a curving fossil spineIn a broken whiteScree of breakers. WetThunderheads pile like dirty rags above it.”And there’s a delicious tension in the way the speakers of these poems perceive the world:“Tricky winter light and my own eyeBend the world, if not to beauty, thenTo strangeness, on which the cold sunShines, and the grass shines back like knives.”Underscoring the whole collection is a beautiful expression of spiritual longing tempered with contentment, “A wordless shape-note singing / on the sky.” What a mesmerizing book to return to again and again!

I loved almost every word of this collection. Thomas's work is committed to the visible world without neglecting the mystery of what lies within it, religiously attuned without being sentimental or resorting to platitudes, and formally deft. As I look back through the book to pick a poem to share, I'm finding it difficult to choose. Already some of them seem like old friends. One of my favorite images in the book ("Unraveling into the sky / like breath. . .") comes from this pantoum:AuntsIt was long ago, and they are dead.I never knew them, but I think about them.The story left untold becomes a storyI can tell myself until it's true.I never knew them, but I think about them,These grim ladies in black high-collared dresses.I can tell myself until it's trueThat they've been laughing. The camera turns on them,And they are grim: thee ladies, black high collared dresses,Three aunts posed beneath a catalpa tree.They've been laughing. The camera turns on themThe weight of being seen forever like that--Three aunts posed beneath a catalpa tree,Unloved and unremembered, three brown names,The weight of being seen forever. Like that,They fade. The catalpa tree dissolves,Unloved and unremembered, brown tree of namesNo one can read, unraveling into the sky.They fade, the catalpa tree dissolves,A dark age overtakes them like sleep.No one can read them. Unraveling into the skyLike breath, their slender memory's unwritten.A dark age overtakes them. While they sleepI will tell their story to myself,All breath, all the memories unwritten,All the names wrong, the dates mis-guessed.This is the story I keep telling myself--What does time matter to a story?So the names are wrong, the dates mis-guessed.The sun's handprints among the catalpa leavesAre all the time that matters to this storyIn which three women glower at the cameraThrough sunlight handprinted by catalpa leaves,A day on which anything might have happenedTo these three who glower at the cameraDaring it to mistake them for the Fates.On this day, anything might have happened.All I know is that they stand there glowering.Daring the camera. Looking like the FatesWho stare down their own unknowable future.I know that the three of them stand glowering.They cannot imagine that I will see themStare down their own unknowable future,Where I stand, on the far side of the grave.Do they imagine someone like me? Who will see us,They might be wondering. Who will love us?Who will know us on the far side of the grave?Does the long loneliness look back at them?Well might they wonder, Who will love us?The relative they visited are dead.The long loneliness has looked back at them,And in that moment I don't know what they are doing,Which relative, now dead, they are visiting,Why they've gathered beneath the catalpa.In that moment, what have they stopped doing?Saved from time, what can they be thinkingWhile the white sun glares through the catalpa?Though the story left untold becomes a story,Time doesn't care what they are thinking.They are dead, and it was long ago.

In Motherland, Sally Thomas crafts keen poetic insight into beautiful made objects using powerful poetic tools: rhyme, metrics, thoughtful diction, a keen sense of language’s music, and a firm grip on the holy mystery of the everyday. There’s a broad range of styles in this, her first full-length book, but here’s a small poem that pleases me greatly:Snow WeatherA falcon on a wireAgainst the laden skyScanned his brown empireWith a black-ice eye.Nothing beneath him stirredIn that sunless instant,But my heart, for a keen-eyed birdBlind to me, or indifferent.

This has become one of my favorite books ever. If you like poetry at all, get this book; if you don’t read poetry you will realize how wonderful poetry can be. Sally Thomas is a poet, a keen observer of nature and people. She is a poet whose radiant words are meant to be savored again and again.

Thomas Daniel Young taught an introduction to poetry class at Vanderbilt. He was almost ready to retire when I took that class, which was scheduled in a second-floor classroom of Stevenson Center, home to mathematicians and scientists, where humanities professors seemed interlopers, at best. On a couple occasions I had to retrieve him from corners of the stairwell he had wandered into. I can now attest it happens to everyone eventually. Dr. Young's definition of poetry was "the means by which we express that which we cannot express otherwise," which echoes Frederic Delius's definition of music. He would ask rhetorically in class, of a particular poem: "What is this poem about?" And, hearing no response from the half-dozen assembled freshmen, would supply an answer: "It is about death. Death is what this poem is about." Dr. Young was a native of Rose Hill, Mississippi, and so, for him, "death" was a three-syllable word with an "L" in it. Scan that, Shakespeare. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Sally Thomas's poems in this collection. They accept and address death, but they are "about" life, creative and eternal. Expressions "about death" are facile by comparison. This is remarkable work.