review by Grady Harp
Charlotte Pence is a poet new to this reader and in leaving this brief sprinkle of her talent found in THE BRANCHES, THE AXE, THE MISSING she establishes herself quite quietly as an artist to heed. The collection of poems is only 20 pages in length, but the manner in which she ties together all of the poems in this little tome, each poem enhancing the others - a fact that becomes obvious only as the last entry is read, and then the reader realizes that this is not a collection of poems but a binding of synapses both profound and gentle - this technique is subtle, creative, and challenging.
Love and loss of love, exhilaration and profound angst, these and other private moments she explores but always in the context of how we developed as a species, as though the branches of the seedling from whence we started and the roots that penetrate the substrate that has become our living place are all somehow best viewed through the lens of relationships. It makes a fascinating journey, one guided with some of the most beautiful metaphors and caressing of words that are equal to famous poets of the past and of the present. The first unnamed example addresses her perception of man's progress in the food chain:
We were born from wood and fire.
Roasting small mammals as we sat
in circles. The sizzle-spit of fat striking
flame. And outside the circle: darkness.
Stalk of hyena. Crick-shift of his step.
Then man lifting a torch - jab-jab-jabbing
that dark until the sounds flee back to the
quiet: sizzle-spits. Shifts of logs carboned
and bone-thin. Ashed by morning.
But Charlotte Pence creates divergences that speak about family and lineage and the meaning of heritage, as in the following:
The wet, the cold,
makes her think of Spike,
her father. Or perhaps
what makes her think
of her father
is the house itself,
its heater clicking on
as she opens the door,
the stargazers' scent
drifting form the hall,
the red-packaged log
on the hearth, and
the dog by this log,
whining because
it has not seen her
in five hours. She
has not seen her
father in fifteen years.
He is homeless,
a fact many friends
don't even know. If
she is asked why
her father moved
her family as often as
every six months,
she
replies that he has
a "mercurial disposition."
Mercurial an SAT word.
She does not know
How to spell
Schizophrenia.
Pedophilia she learned
In the third grade.
It is just this sort or admixing of revisiting the past equipped with contemporary knowledge that suffuses all her poems, whether addressing the process of creation and the downward slide to Now or thoughts of family or ex-husbands or unimaginable lovers that makes her poems so genuinely intoxicating.
The book design by Rebecca Maslen probes as deeply as Pence's fine poetry, a trademark of the interaction of the visual with the word we are beginning to recognize from Black Lawrence Press.
Grady Harp, July 2012
TITLE: THE BRANCHES, THE AXE, THE MISSING
AUTHOR: CHARLOTTE PENCE
PUBLISHER: BLACK LAWRENCE PRESS
ISBN: 9780982876671
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