Review by Mindy Kronenberg
Perhaps it was serendipitous that Barbara Crooker’s evocative and engaging book of poems on the rewards and ravages of aging landed in my hands as I approach my seventieth year. Like many of a certain age, I began to watch, with both wonder and wistfulness, how the abundance and ease of life reverses itself slowly and slyly— the dwindling of friends and intimates, the increased challenges within the corporeal realm. This is not to say that Crooker’s observations are dire or maudlin; her poetic acumen is cautious but gracious, and not without humor on occasion. A long life, and one well lived, is a gift with caveats.
Each moment for the poet becomes precious, a plateau for immersion even as the past flows into a future she’s contemplated. In “Seventieth Birthday” (p 29) Crooker recounts the details of a special evening, a memory that is fleeting but cherished:
That evening, I sat at a table
with a fine linen cloth, elegant cocktail
of lemon vodka, champagne, elder-
flower liqueur, stars in my ears.”
She is sitting “…with the man I still/ love, his silver hair glinting/in the dim half-light.” It is a luxuriating event, despite the idea that “I know later/ there’ll be an empty chair, A cold bed.” But she also states “…right now, I have/ everything I need: the sun coming up/tomorrow morning…” Time is unstoppable, so its crucial to pause and preserve its bounty.
This theme is so eloquently repeated throughout the book, as in “Ceremonies of Grief” (p 78) where visitation during a funeral summons the notion of preparedness, and the changing rites of passages that fills one’s days. When asked by another mourner “Are you ready?” she realizes the question pertained to her own plans,
…if I bought my plot yet, that bed with
green sheets and hard white pillows.
I wanted to say we’re too young,
but I know these will be the gatherings
we’ll be going to now, not weddings
or baptisms. …
Maturity and its respect for the ephemeral threads a gratefulness through many of these poems. In “Late Night Martini” (p 89) the poet waxes philosophically,
…sitting on black wrought iron chairs
talking poetry & friendship, love & loss.
Above us, the indifferent stars glitter
Cold light. …
The poet mentions “We come from spindrift and stardust” and that we also “…wobble in our orbits, unsure and alone.” Yet after the speculation of how things might play out, she shares: “My long-stemmed glass, which is now/half empty, seems to me half-full.”
“Aphorisms at 70” (p 30) admits that despite knowing “Now ‘when’ becomes ‘if” and that the numerous crucial goals in life will not be met, “red wine goes with everything… you don’t need a partner to dance.” “I Want to Write a Poem to Celebrate” (p 31) revels unabashedly, in the small ravages of age, the vestiges of life worn on the body:
…the scars, the lines, the silver threads
unwinding.I no longer care about air-brushed
celebrities in glossy magazines…
…thighs,
More Venus of Willendorf than Kate Moss
Or Twiggy. Upper arms that wobble like Jello
No matter how many reps I do at the gym. Belly
That stretched big as a watermelon, then spit out
(how did that happen?) sweet pink babies. …
There are vignettes presented with an eye of a cinematographer, childhood narratives wrought with imagery that pivot with profound transitions “Diorama” (p 15), an eerie shoe box display of “a small nuclear family” stilled among the vintage comforts of home; the mingling of early memories with the reconciling of a changed neighborhood and those lost through time, as in “On Teaching Poetry Classes in My Old Elementary School in Honor of Its 100th Anniversary,” (p 14), a recollection both nostalgic and poignant: “Here’s the bend in the creek/where we used to go swimming, the railroad tracks we crossed/ in winter to the frozen pond beyond. Here is the street/ where we went sledding; this is childhood’s end.”
Slow Wreckage is an eloquent collection of poems that plumb the pangs and pleasures of an alert and engaged life, renders wisdom in the face of mortality.
Slow Wreckage by Barbara Crooker
Grayson Books, 2024
ISBN 979-8-9888186-3-2 $16.95
Mindy Kronenberg is an award-winning poet and writer with numerous publications world-wide. She teaches at SUNY Empire State University, is the editor of Oberon poetry magazine, and the author of Dismantling the Playground (Birnham Wood), Images of America: Miller Place (Arcadia), and OPEN, an illustrated poetry book (Clare Songbirds Publishers). In 2024 she was named Literature Ambassador by the Long Island Literature & Poetry Repository.