Impossibly Small Spaces by Lisa C. Taylor (Arlen House)

“...it isn’t fair that one species can exploit another and that sometimes even when I want to, I can’t protect those who need it most”.

A universal sentiment to be sure, but the angle Lisa C. Taylor takes in this collection of short stories is defining who most needs that protection.  Stepping back from a more traditional world view, Taylor demonstrates in Impossibly Small Spaces that it is a tiny corner of our most private self that is most at risk.  How that secret self gets protected, and what defines safety, is the core of the stories that take a fresh perspective on what we do when the unpredictable occurs.

I had read her previous book, Growing a New Tail, a few years ago. I was knocked out by how she painted characters in absolutely ordinary situations who dealt with both the mundane and the ugly in their own unique way. The flip side to this new collection is that it is the situations that are nothing ordinary, and the character reactions are complicated.  Self-preservation by denial and running from grief is a tactic these characters find necessary. They aren’t making grand gestures of expansive good works to society. Rather, they are in survival mode, which can take many forms, some of which are no good at all.

In one story, two strangers awaiting a plane arrival briefly acknowledge each other before the worst news crashes in on them. They don’t react as if in a Hallmark happy-ending movie plot.  Their next actions are spontaneous, slightly insane, poorly thought out, and terribly real.  It’s that kick of the reality of what they do that drives many of the stories:  no one prepares us for crisis, so no one can say we are doing it wrong.

Many of the stories have the basis of strangers in pairs trying to navigate a crisis. One woman needs a date for a wedding, but finds that getting one means revealing her most fragile secret. Another character creates secrets to hide his own reality, but loses himself so deeply in falsehoods that nothing is real for him anymore.

In a moment of self-reflection, he considers a fish tank: “Did [the fish] have the consciousness to know he was in a prison or did every body of water feel the same?”  The reader senses that the alternate reality he’s created is probably more prison than safety, even though he has no intention of escape.

Throughout the stories, which stand alone and are not linked, Taylor’s insightful character studies mean they are not easily forgotten.  Weeks after I first read it, I remembered certain characters with a sort of wistful, “what if” thought as to their survival skill. It was as if I’d read a newspaper article about real people.

“A life with this much colour requires a mute button.”  That mute button is the key to finding the impossibly small spaces that let us survive whatever happens. Taylor’s stories are rich and complex, and entirely unforgettable.

Review copy provided by Arlen House Press.

Review by L. R.

The Alchemist's Kitchen, Susan Rich (poetry)

The Alchemist's Kitchen, by Susan Rich, published by White Pine Press (http://www.whitepine.org/).

To say that this compilation is a lovely and simple collection would be false.  "Simple" could be taken to mean childlike, or unsophisticated, which it most certainly isn't.  By simple I mean that the poetry is understandable and personal, not so cluttered and overly nuanced that it becomes incapable of eliciting emotion.

Emotion abounds in this collection, which is divided into three parts:  Incantation, Transformation and Song.  Each section has its own beauty, and there is a delicate feel that at times becomes jagged and pointed, enough to make you sit up and re-read the stanza.  This is not a poetry book to sit back and feel relaxed by, but rather one to slowly meditate upon.

The people drawn within it are complicated:  in one moment trying to determine if a noise is simply thunder or an airstrike, while choosing what breakfast cereal to eat.  They carefully choose a lipstick for a dance that may be their last.  They discuss their travels with a dying parent whose only journey is from hospital bed to bath.  They are painful and yet some are light and airy.

One of my favorites:  from Song,
"You Might Consider"

how my long life of losing men
could create a new international sport.

Men lost in the desert, men missing
in action from doorways and all night diners;

men making the most of fire
escapes, service stairs, the emergency aisle

of airplanes like United.  Men
para-sailing after spaceship encounters.

I am accomplished in the world
of the see-you-later save

as his pick up truck disappears
traveling on to the next espresso stand.

Something in the curve of my collar,
the cut of my blouse sets them running.

They know they are in the hands of a master.
But when the coffee's on, the pumpernickel

toasted just right, I have to let them know;
I'm actually ready to let them go."  p.87

In "Transcendence", she uses the musical phrase,
"plastic curtains ecstatic as castanets."  Words like that are mesmerizing, and I kept finding segments equally unique and beautiful, compiling an instant mental picture.

In some of the poems she discusses the genocide in Srebrenica, and at times she refers to a 'Sarajevo Rose'.  I had to look that up, and I've included a picture (above).  A Sarajevo Rose is the location of a mortal shell attack that killed some one, some person, some individual that meant more than just a mark on the pavement.  The damaged area is then filled with red wax, as a rememberance.  That strange mix of memory and horror with a tiny dash of shocking color is what too many have lived through, and in a lyrical way Rich manages to link her poems with that same emotional impact.