Tess Gallagher

There were many very good poems in this longish volume of poetry. The more I read poetry, also, I find I am more in touch with the differences between poets, having read this book almost immediately after reading Ellen Bass's Like A Beggar.

In the Company of Flowers on page 9 is one of the first poems I took note of.

In The Company of Flowers

all day, coming away
like an ordinary person who
might have been at a till. Thinking
as I dug into the earth of my mother
who, when my youngest brother
died, was taken in
by beauty, not as consolation
but because she found him
there as she made the garden.

Each day she tended it
he kept a little more
of her. If ever I doubt
the power of the dead, I walk
her garden in May, rhododendrons
so red, so white their clustered goblets
spill translucent tongues of light at the rim
of the sea. And it is ordinary

to be so accompanied,
so fused to the silence of all that,
as it eludes me, as I am taken in.

Surely my reappearance must wear
the borrowed abundance she
gave me that morning
I was born

Others in this book that stood out for me are Blind Dog/Seeing Girl, Dream cancel, Glass impresses, and Correction. Here is a bit from Blind Dog/Seeing Girl that I liked:

"Even the girl knows in her sighted
witnessing: we are each
lost, and beholden until,
with deer-like tentative stepping,
each invisible threshold yields, and
still calling in her useless voice,
the girl forfeits all notion of possessing
the zigzagged way her exactly there dog
at last hazards herself into

her waiting arms. And isn't it joy
the dog expresses as the world
dissolves into just that moment
she has magically united with
her very own missing girl."

Tess Gallagher's poetry is expressive and pithy and I really enjoyed the twists and turns my mind had to make to figure out the meaning of what she was trying to express in her poetry. She spends time in the west of Ireland as well as the pacific northwest of the United States and she writes poetry inspired by both of these locations as well as others. I will definitely keep a look out for more of her books going forward.… (meer)

Gallagher is best known for her poetry, but this collection proves she is no slouch at the short fiction genre. I enjoyed nearly every selection here, which is not something I can often say about a book of short stories. For the most part, these have a true beginning, middle and end, and you feel like you've heard a Story when you finish one. They don't always "go" anywhere, but they are nearly always a fine place to "be". The characters have depth and life immediately (how does she do that?), the language is often poetic without being overblown, and there is a lot of wry humor. Gallagher gets under the surface of ordinary people, exposing the pithy centers of their lives, and with her guidance we can appreciate the mythic elements of the quotidian.… (meer)