A Penetrating Light by Jonathan Everitt

Valediction
poems and prose by Linda Parsons
Madville Publishing
79 pages

So prominent is light in these poems that it is almost a character itself—a muse, a specter. And Linda Parsons’ Valediction takes full advantage of all the qualities and connotations light casts upon our world. The warm glow of a blaze, of autumn, of human radiance, and of life coming to an end.

The performance of light opens with a bang in the collection’s first piece, “Light Around Trees in Morning,” which describes paperbark maples as if burning in a sunrise, then culminates with a gardener herself bursting into flames. “Sometimes I think / light comes only when we’re bowed / too low to notice our leaves and limbs / burnished by morning, our bodies / in spontaneous combustion.” And with that, the poet welcomes the reader into a collection lyrically lit from within.

The poems in Parson’s sixth collection, Valediction, are punctuated by single-page prose pieces, each titled “Visitation” along with a qualifier (e.g., “Visitation: Rising”). “Visitation” is both a fine complement to the sound of the title and a fitting designation for a book looking so closely at loss.

But the poet’s farewell tributes extend beyond those written for lost loved ones. Something else is often looming on the page—evening, winter, old age. Consider the title poem’s closing lines: “Plaintive ocarina, / call me to bear all the light coming.” To bear light, as the reader may discover, is not only to reflect it, but sometimes to emit it or receive it from people and places fading away. To wit, in “Visitation: Rising,” Parsons touches on the notion of human radiance with “I’ve seen my share of untimely passing—those spirited away with so much light left to bear.”

As the collection progresses, light arrives in many forms, and the significance of life and death is richly expressed through the metaphor of a gardener in autumn. The poet explores this in “Visitation: Bright,” where Parsons writes, “The gardens seem to glow richer before first frost, a last hurrah before the ghostly breath passes over,” adding, “This sometimes happens in those who are dying, a sudden animation and presence called terminal lucidity.”

But is that observation limited to loved ones’ deaths or is the poet also alluding to her own farewell? “Nearing seventy, my own gloaming,” Parsons notes in the poem “Come Home” (a nod to a classic hymn). Such is the clarity that comes with time, particularly for a gardener attuned to the seasons.

In “Visitation: Necessary,” Parsons writes, “I’ve heard fall described as a softening, but I see it as a sharpening—the light, colors, air clicked into focus, the year winding down, a bittersweetness to pierce the heart.” The connection to life’s own seasons here is gently etched.

And while there is plenty of bucolic scenery to explore here, the collection takes surprising segues, as in “Airing It Out,” which begins with the speaker sunbathing nude and flashes back to the speaker’s mother giving birth to her sister. “I peer into the pelvic doorway— / memory of my mother spread-eagle.” Sometimes, goodbyes bring reckonings. But I won’t spoil the story.

The poet’s ear also works hard in this book. In “A Woman Dreams a Cow in Her Dining Room,” Parsons transforms a familiar phrase into something as sacred as a prayer. “How now” the poem begins, its stanzas echoing the sounds throughout. “How … how … how … how … hills … home … headstrong … clouds…”

Swirling with simple music, aglow with bittersweet light, deliciously embroidered with scenes from a life, this is a perfect collection to read as fall approaches. Pour some tea and get comfortable.

~

Parsons, of Knoxville, Tennessee, is the author of the poetry collections Home Fires (1997), Mother Land (2008), and Bound (2011), This Shaky Earth (2016) and Candescent (2019), as well as contributor to numerous anthologies. Her poems have appeared in Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Chattahoochee Review, The Baltimore Review, and Shenandoah, among others. She earned a BA and an MA in English literature from the University of Tennessee.

James Bogue, photographer

Jonathan Everitt is a poet and freelance writer based in Rochester, N.Y. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in BlazeVox, Scarlet Leaf Review, Small Orange, Impossible Archetype, Ghost City Press, The Bees Are Dead, The Empty Closet, Lake Affect, Le Mot Juste, and the Moving Images poetry anthology, among others. His poem, “Calling Hours,” was the basis for the 2015 short film, Say When. Jonathan has also led a workshop for LGBTQ poets at The Rochester Rainbow Union and co-founded the long-running monthly open mic, New Ground Poetry Night. He earned his MFA in creative writing from Bennington College.