Unmaking Atoms
By Magdalena Ball
By Magdalena Ball
Genre: Poetry/ Poetry: Science
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Ginninderra Press
(January 11, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1760412821
ISBN-13: 978-1760412821
Rated: Five stars
Reviewed by Kristin Johnson, reviewer, author and consultant
Magdalena Ball, the author of
eight collections of poetry (several in collaboration with Carolyn
Howard-Johnson) as well as two novels and a nonfiction book, The Art of
Assessment: How to Review Anything, is a multifaceted author, but her specialty
is verse, especially scientific, astronomical and physics-themed poems, with
threads of anthropology, zoology and biology.
From a cursory review of the
titles, you might not think the verse offerings and prose poems (there is at
least one, a prose/verse hybrid) have anything to do with protons, neutrons and
electrons. Titles such as “Pranayama,” “Gargantua Redacted,” “Woman with her
hair loose,” “Most of Everything is Nothing,” and the intriguing “Shallots and
Garlic” (based on an Indonesian/Malaysian folktale) all seem on the surface to
be more literary than scientific.
Look deeper. Look with the wonder
that physicists have when they observe the atom. Like atoms, words combine to
make different elements, different states of energy (passion, anger, fear,
celebration, grief). So it is with Unmaking Atoms.
How, exactly, can one unmake
atoms? Through nuclear fission. How, exactly, can one unmake the illusions of
our human lives? Through poetry fission.
In the first poem of the
collection, “The Last Report of the Day,” Ball introduces a recurring theme that
hovers throughout the collection like cosmic radiation: the death of a parent,
specifically a mother. She references a renowned woman poet in the opening
line.
“I saw you, Adrienne Rich.
In my dream we were
walking like old friends
conspicuously cool
our maps drawn
before we took up pens
eyes searching for something
deeper than the wrinkles on our
skin.
I felt your hand, crooked with
arthritis
brush mine
in the depths of my
consciousness”
How do the longing for an absent
mother and a famous poet as a mother-figure in this passage relate to atoms? Or
this verse in the next poem, “Charitable Crumb”:
“mother, father, siblings,
lovers
the loss that kept coming
like water
suspended over blue-grey
stones.”
Loss, specifically the loss of a
mother, is the atom at the heart of this collection, split and reassembled in
myriad ways with a dizzying elegance and versatility. Although the poetry
examines birds, exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, “loamy” soil (a favorite
word in the collection), paintings as the subject of several ekphrastic poems
(poetry that is in response to a work of art), yellow jacquard sofas, the sense
of loss and wistfulness, of losing oneself in nature, science, literature and
art, create the atomic chain reaction and the “Atomic Mess” that, in essence, is
death. Those who have lost a mother will probably be saying, “She gets me, she
understands,” when they read “Yellow Jacquard.”
However, matter cannot be created
or destroyed, and this collection unmakes, and then reassembles, the words and
images as well as emotions including the sense of joy that permeates Ball’s
lyricism. That joy manifests in a “laugh that shakes the floor,” the line and
curve that brings wholeness, a light “softer than the cut of love.”
The reader encounters surprises,
such as anger and yearning for the same person/subject within the space of a few
lines:
“your feathers rise
poison in your beak
brightens the plumage
rainbow body, earth to water
water to wind
all I know: the taste in
my mouth says find you
find you find you”
The “you” in the poem has “poison
in your beak,” and yet Ball’s narrator yearns for the subject. A subtle
commentary that what we love is not always sentimental or full of hearts and
flowers, and that loss is painful.
We often create meaning, and
different elements, by unmaking and reassembling aspects and details of our
lives, misconceptions and words said and unsaid. This is the power of Ball’s
poetry, especially in this collection.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Kristin Johnson is a
prize-winning/prize finalist writer, blogger, ghostwriting/creative writing
consultant, screenwriter, and editor. A graduate of the Master of Professional
Writing Program from the University of Southern California, she has
published/collaborated
on six books and has
ghostwritten several books (and scripts) for clients that acknowledge her
contribution. The Internet etiquette self-help book AIN'T "U" GOT NO MANNERS (A
Vegas Publisher) is her latest book.
Visit http://www.augnm.com/ and http://www.kristinjohnson.net.
She is on Facebook at facebook.com/AuthorKJ, facebook.com/augnm.
Visit http://www.augnm.com/ and http://www.kristinjohnson.net.
She is on Facebook at facebook.com/AuthorKJ, facebook.com/augnm.
Find her on Twitter @AuthorKJ.
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