Voice Message

Katherine Barrett Swett

• Publisher: Autumn House Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781938769528
• eBook ISBN: 9781938769696
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Through the poems of Voice Message, Katherine Barrett Swett reflects on her personal tragedy and the fragility of human lives and bodies with a tender care. Her debut collection explores the powers of art and poetry to participate in the processing of catastrophic grief, speaking through both the consolation and devastation these creative works can offer. Swett's formal verse provides a lens through which sadness, destruction, and loss appear as aberrant and inevitable. In tragic lyric, the poet searches poetry, art, mythology, and her own memory for the fleeting image of her lost daughter "in music, painting, or a carved stone name." Frequently looking to visual arts for inspiration, she finds that Vermeer's paintings of distant rooms guide and contextualize pain, offering motivation, comfort, and release. Through villanelles, sonnets, quatrains, and free verse, Swett invokes the voices, narratives, and images, both personal and cultural, that haunt her speakers. Suspended in the aftermath of the unexpected and unspeakable death of her college-age daughter, the poet's language is held together in a somber and necessary restraint. But this restraint does not signal the peace of closure. Rather, these poems quietly and steadily remind readers it is still "the open wound / not the scar," that "all we have are words and flesh," and that we are forever vulnerable. The rhythm of and echoes of sonnets and songs lead us to the sticky intersections of tragedy, recovery, and strange forms of beauty.

PART I

SONGS AND SONNETS

Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,

For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

—John Donne

CHAINSAW

One day it’s gone, the tree outside, cut down

by selfish neighbors in the back who own

the square of pavement where the tree had grown

for decades; this ailanthus weed, self-sown,

provided moving shadows on the wall

and birdsong in the mornings as we woke.

It had already grown five stories tall,

a bit of wild in a concrete yoke.

Now every day we wake to what is wrecked—

the lonely silence of what’s disappeared

and what remains: the pigeon’s dreary coo

and knowing there is nothing we can do.

The citadels we thought were safe, sacked

and woods we thought forever woods, cleared.

TWO WOODCUTS

I Red Fuji

Sleeping daughter

in the next bed

I woke to red Fuji

every morning

wakes to my daughter

still dead

You should have woken me

she later said

Summer day Boston

Hokusai exhibit

Fuji blue and red

II Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Everywhere

in the park

light and peace

surround

a monumental grief

fierce not dark

the open wound

not the hard scar

paper around

floating fire

TWO VILLANELLES

I Flute Song

In every sound I hear, I see her lips

laughing or blowing in the silver flute.

The wind goes in and out until it stops.

And when she played, she gently swayed her hips

and kept time softly with her slippered foot.

In every single note, I hear her lips.

In every storm, I taste teardrops

and feel her stamp her leather boot.

The wind goes in and out until it stops.

And when she’s mad, the gale force rips

the gutters off the streaming roof.

In every single blow, I feel her lips.

In every crack of every pear that drops,

she’s always there among the bruised fruit.

The wind goes in and out until it stops;

it stops its tapping, tossing fingertips.

Let every voice and every song go mute.

In every sound I hear, I see her lips;

the wind goes in and out until it stops.

II Winter Light

I wish I could believe that ghosts were true

—a flashlight ready when the lights go out—

that death could leave behind a bit of you.

I pass you on the street; I interview

someone who tosses her black hair about.

I wish I could believe that ghosts were true.

Forget-me-nots return each year in blue;

your brother smiles and something in his mouth—

I think death left behind a bit of you.

I wear your yellow sweater from J. Crew

or hear a piece you practiced on the flute;

I can almost believe that ghosts are true.

The skin, the voice, the laugh, the it of you

grow daily more and more remote;

death’s only left behind a bit of you,

which isn’t you. The winter light comes through

your window on a thousand whirling motes.

I wish I could believe that ghosts were true

and death had left behind a bit of you.

THREE SONGS

I Father

Astronomers now all concur

that asteroids much prefer

smashing into Jupiter

than into any other.

His heavy-duty gravity

vacuums up calamity

and keeps the other planets free

from terrors temporarily.

II Never Disappear

Can you wait

for Queen Anne’s lace,

black-eyed Susan’s

orange face,

the meadow higher

than your knees,

heron fishing,

skunky breeze?

Can you wait

till autumn comes,

the pears are ripe,

chrysanthemums,

tomatoes hanging

from the vine,

jeans and sweaters

on the line?

Can you wait

for pale spring leaves,

for daffodils

and peonies?

Can you wait

another year

and maybe never

disappear?

III Song in Flood Time

All night we thought of tides

and winds and what they bring

and take and what survives.

We could not sing.

If we had stopped the flood

that covered ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Part I. Songs and Sonnets
• Part II. Vermeer’s Daughters
• Part III. Marginalia
• In Gratitude
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author