From Shade to Shine, a book review
From Shade to Shine
Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
Paraclete Press, Iron Pen Imprint, 2022
Many of the poems in this book are not new; they appeared previously in journals or were read or performed for tributes, retirements, dedications—with that being said they are new. Assembled and arranged during a pandemic, in light of mortality, toward the end of a highly productive academic career. So the title seems somewhat indicative, from shade to shine, of that feeling of walking on a day of clouds, where racing shadows envelope the reader, and, just as fleetingly, they disappear and we are surrounded by brilliant sun.
Within this volume we travel from the Orkneys, to the warm environs of Cuba, to the forests of Poland and a concentration camp, to the terrace patio of a Chicago highrise. Baumgaertner takes us there, into the shadows and subterranean Neolithic mounds scattered across the Orkney Islands, then into the bright day as we follow the sun and calendar into Lent, Easter, and summer solstice.
Each poem felt like a homily, a mediation with hints of both light and dark. Life. We cannot walk this earth without both. Our lives cannot be lived without birth and death and all the in between. Take for example “In Matthew Brady’s Photographs” a poem that explores the fore and back ground in a single shot. Confederate and Union bodies frozen in time—
“the imprint of negative images, all pain and burn.”
There is something nostalgic and impossible in old photos. The simple fact one cannot go back and change history and yet a longing to time travel, correct the past or relive it with new eyes, feel the grass bend, the wind in the trees, the stunned silence after the shelling ceases. It is all here in this poem. We cannot return, only imagine.
I’ve known the poet for a number of years and though she projects in conversation mostly shine, one gets a sense of the shade that has also accompanied her life and work. From Shade to Shine endeavors to bring us along.
Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
Paraclete Press, Iron Pen Imprint, 2022
Many of the poems in this book are not new; they appeared previously in journals or were read or performed for tributes, retirements, dedications—with that being said they are new. Assembled and arranged during a pandemic, in light of mortality, toward the end of a highly productive academic career. So the title seems somewhat indicative, from shade to shine, of that feeling of walking on a day of clouds, where racing shadows envelope the reader, and, just as fleetingly, they disappear and we are surrounded by brilliant sun.
Within this volume we travel from the Orkneys, to the warm environs of Cuba, to the forests of Poland and a concentration camp, to the terrace patio of a Chicago highrise. Baumgaertner takes us there, into the shadows and subterranean Neolithic mounds scattered across the Orkney Islands, then into the bright day as we follow the sun and calendar into Lent, Easter, and summer solstice.
Each poem felt like a homily, a mediation with hints of both light and dark. Life. We cannot walk this earth without both. Our lives cannot be lived without birth and death and all the in between. Take for example “In Matthew Brady’s Photographs” a poem that explores the fore and back ground in a single shot. Confederate and Union bodies frozen in time—
“the imprint of negative images, all pain and burn.”
There is something nostalgic and impossible in old photos. The simple fact one cannot go back and change history and yet a longing to time travel, correct the past or relive it with new eyes, feel the grass bend, the wind in the trees, the stunned silence after the shelling ceases. It is all here in this poem. We cannot return, only imagine.
I’ve known the poet for a number of years and though she projects in conversation mostly shine, one gets a sense of the shade that has also accompanied her life and work. From Shade to Shine endeavors to bring us along.
Comments