Title: Tranquility, Solitude, and Other Poems
Author: Karen Lee Oliver
Publisher: Xlibris US
ISBN: 1499015364
Pages: 204
Genre: Poetry
Reviewed by: David Allen

Read Book Review

Who knew that T.S. Eliot’s inspiration derived at least in part from the work of 19th century French poets Tristan Corbière and Jules Laforgue?

So it is. Poets stand on the shoulders of other poets, forever descrying the terrain, the temper of the times, the knock upon Heaven’s door.  Certainly the case with the scintillant, moving, deeply intelligent stanzas of Karen Lee Oliver. Take, for example, her poem Three Cats in A Window: “ On a ledge / Outside / Past the door / To the garden / Sits the cats / In the window. /  Sometimes / They stare / At the pair / Of us /  Who dwell inside. /  Curious, / The difference.”

 Wow. With all the impact of haiku – with the revelatory is-ness of the observed object, and the unblinking witness of the detached observer – the canny detached observer – with the steely grace and precision of Vermeer of Delft – Three Cats and many of the other poems in this collection are ascendant.

The best poetry describes, declaims, moves us to dream, to laughter, to tears.  The best poetry gives pleasure, intense feeling and insight. Witness A Thought to Be Remembered: “ Sometimes / It seems / As though / The world has moved elsewhere. /  Disappeared entirely / From the way it was, / I mean. /  When once remembered things; / A snowflake, the quiet, a place no one knew, / Can be sought after only in memory – / Or a good book telling of the past…”

 So much going on here! Oliver’s way of seeing, feeling, naming things accrues in these poems, to the point where the reader wants always more. The subject matter of the poems is diverse, practically as large as life itself. Oliver engages with loneliness, aging, attrition, and loss as an experienced witness, a voluble snitch, a good friend.

There are many conspiratorial winks among these pages. Some (not too many) of the poems are written in French…further evidence of Oliver’s commitment to the living, seething diverse world. She lives in Poughkeepsie; studied ballet with the American Ballet Theatre as well as English literature; as the author notes describe, she spends “most of her free time writing poetry and believes her writing to be a deep expression of her inner self as well as the world around her.”

Bravo!