Thursday Poetry Review: Sandra Beasley

Theories of Falling
Sandra Beasley
64 pp., New Issues
$14.00


Having been quite lucky so far this year in my poetry selections, I decided to go ahead and pick a safe winner for April with Sandra Beasley's Theories of Falling. That is not to say that the book is safe, only that it was an easy decision as to which book I should buy. I have been a hanger-on at Sandra's blog for a little while, captured by the all too infrequent poems she posts for a few hours. When her book was available, I immediately ordered it.

If you are already familiar with Beasley's poetry, you know her elegance, how her language is always a few yards in front of you, leading you somewhere wonderful. If you are not familiar with her poetry, this first book is certain to please. From the very first line in the opening poem, "Cherry Tomatoes," I was struck with the sense that I was in for a real treat. Beasley is a poet who knows how to control the language, and her use of sentence is astounding.

I really don't want labor the fact that this won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize, because the book does not follow the pattern of the typical contest winner. This is a fist book full of mature language, a confidence in the stories it tells, and poems which stay with the reader. In the longest poem of the book, "Allergy girl," Beasley boldly exposes her past in episodic poems which are not afraid to shift from one form or tone to the next, each doing what it must to get the job done. Take for example these lines from the first section of the poem:


My parents agree on one rule: Don't break the baby.
They pour quarters into the arcade game of adulthood
working the mechanical claw right, left, right, back,
aiming for the stuffed bear, missing.

Later, in another section of the poem, we read how the adult deals with the allergies:


Now, I have learned to be a bad patient.

I refuse IVs. I knock back two Benadryl
with vodka, asleep before asking
anyone to check, each hour, for breath.


Beasley goes on to talk about her ex-lovers, the strangeness and difficulties of putting up with non-believers, and risks the girl, now a woman, is willing to take. All in all, this poem, early in the book, sets the stage for more like stories to be told---some a delight and some cutting close to the bone.

I feel a need to express my delight at this time for the ordering of the poems. There is a certain intuition, almost a devine hand at play in their compositions. Beasley seems to have known exactly which poem should go next. I cannot find a single misstep in the book's organization. For example, after telling stories, the second section of the book (also the title of the book) begins to tumble into the sensual and carnal. I only half meant to use that pun. The section starts off by alluding to the body, and by the time the reader encounters the poem "In Which I Fail, Again, to be Vestal" we are sucked into the erotic before we know what's going on.

While the title poem is compelling in its own right, I would like to showcase a few lines from the poem, "The Parade." It's here we see a deeply vulnerable figure, one that while female, is still able to communicate across gender lines:

I throw a parade of thirty reasons you shouldn't love me.
Shut up, you say, I know what I love.
What can you know? I know

there is no constancy to this body---


By the time the second section ends, there is a certain urgency in the poems. We want more because we need to know what happens, what can happen next.

As has been shown by the sample line I have given, the use of dialogue is an important element to this book, and Beasley knows how to measure it very carefully. Along with sentence and line, dialogue is sharp, never overbearing, and always inspired.

The subject matter for this book of poems is delightfully broad in spectrum. Longing, regret, even a magician's assistant, all make appearances. But at the book's center is the same, wonderful voice, always whispering secrets, telling stories out of school, and hinting at the extraordinary magic of this world just out of reach from our fingertips as we find ourselves falling (alright, so I meant that one) through our lives, tring to land on our feet. To paraphrase Beasley, I love the trick of poetry, but what I love is the reveal. This book reveals much to the reader.