REVIEWS OF DEFINITE SPACE
In Definite Space Ann Iverson's second collection of poems, she ponders how war initiates marital, filial, and personal change as the work documents a step-son’s first deployment to Iraq, a move to the country, and the step-son’s second deployment to Iraq. As she copes with changes initiated primarily by war, Iverson considers the tension within relationships that change often engenders; in doing so, she personalizes a national tragedy and the subsequent war in Iraq. Iverson, then, explores how war and its insistent, albeit surreal reality shatters our perceptions about our lovers, our families, and ourselves.
Throughout the work Iverson explores marital tension as caused by extreme life circumstances. For example, she notes the disconnect between husband and wife in the poem “Father of A Soldier:” “that day he slammed into the house/ threw the bags of groceries on the table/ with the sight of a military vehicle/ crouching near the home” (21). The wife, while not unsympathetic to her husband’s frustration—she likens him to “an old lily”—cannot comfort him and copes by “mak[ing] the bed/ pull[ing] the weeds, and putt[ing] on her makeup” while “hear[ing] a phone ringing/in her head” (21). A war and its realities, symbolized by the “military vehicle/ crouching near the home,” divide old lovers. Other poems in the first section echo this disconnect; in “Focus” Iverson writes: “He loses his glasses, /almost his mind, / screams about things/ that don’t matter. She smokes cigarettes/ stares out the window/ until logic blurs away/ into snowdrifts and newscasts” (28). In fact, the collection continues to explore separation between people in the second section; in the poem “He Saw the Owl,” and she writes: “He saw the owl/ and all she saw/ were tangled branches….She saw the deer,/ but let him see them first/ as though it were a game/ that she would never win”… “He sees the roads at night/ and all she sees is darkness. When she dreams, / he sees nothing. Those roads don’t belong to him” (32).
Iverson also explores a son’s coming of age as initiated by war, an exploration made all the more poignant given the fact that she writes about her step-son. In “Driving Through Louisiana, Christmas Day, 2002” the speaker contemplates life and its mysteries, observing: “What is here is everywhere: the irreversible, the small,/ the insubordinate:/ man, woman, son” (17). Her quiet thoughts intermingle with questions about the “boy in the military beret, [and]his fate weighing in/on a curious scale that no small man can teeter” and ultimately, from the car’s backseat, the speaker realizes that she doesn’t “recognize his worried brow/ in the rearview mirror” (17). Other poems underscore the son’s transition from innocence to experience. In the poem “What to Say” an impending deployment forces the speaker to recognize her son’s painful transition from childhood to adulthood, and she asks: “What to say/ to a boy, soldier now/ . . . What to give/ but a medal/ of St. Christopher/ whose burden was too heavy/ [as] a child” (19). In the end, mother and father eschew lengthy advice and give him the trinket, saying only “wear this medal” (19). Significantly, the boy, soldier now, has accepted adult responsibilities that teach hard lessons. For instance, in “Post-Traumatic Stress” the speaker notes: “Stumbling drunk/ your father nearly/carries you to bed. You sleep for hours,/ wake up, case the dark hall,/. . .as though/it’s another/ fearful, shadowed passage” (36). While not unsympathetic to her step-son’s plight, the mother cannot smooth the transition from boyhood to manhood, from innocence to experience.
While Definite Space focuses on separation and disconnection, it doesn’t stay there. In fact, the beauty in Iverson’s poetry is that while she acknowledges breakdowns in relationships, she observes that these breakdowns, paradoxically, can compel one towards personal growth and therefore, closer relationships. In “Driving Through Louisiana, Christmas Day, 2002” after the speaker has considered life, war, and her son, she concludes: “All untouchable subjects liquefy, pour out beyond the realms/of what can be contained./ Lets love spill best from broken hearts./ God, if there is a stream that does not empty/ its pain into a larger world, teach my heart to learn its path” (18). In addition, the speaker’s move to the country—a transition prompted by her husband—compounds her struggle to reconcile herself, her husband, and her son to war. As the narrative takes shape throughout the text, the speaker initially dislikes the country, misses the city, and considers leaving her husband in order to return to familiarity. However, it is this unfamiliarity, this sense of unbalance that enables the speaker to experience a rebirth. In “Code in Wartime” Iverson writes: “He has never heard her cry/ like she cries in the country, complete and unutterable sobs./ Water that shakes her body, / walls, foundation, the last leaves of the shimmering birch” (56). The separation and disconnection from the familiar, while initially alienating the speaker from her home, her husband, and her son, ultimately bring them back again, but in a richer, fuller way. In “Leafless. Coyotes.” the speaker acknowledges that the moon “owns [her] / out here in the country” (81). In “New Year’s Day” she reconciles with her husband noting that “For better or for worse/ we both agreed./ Now, agreeing/ for the better” (84). And finally, in “War Prayer” the speaker observes her son’s successful transition to manhood: “But see the goslings follow in the pond?/ They grow, depart, return./ The boy, man now, more and more,/ will go on forever” (90).
Iverson makes direct references to contemporary political events, but she mutes their potential polarizing effect by considering them within a non-politicized context: her life. While Iverson initially addresses September 11th in “Twin Towers,” she does so much more as she attempts to reconcile the tragedy of war with the soft gestures of nature and animals and everyday love in Definite Space. However, in the end—as the work’s title suggests—we are left with no definitive conclusions. Rather, the author encourages the reader to appreciate life’s small gifts in a lopsided, but lovely world. No matter one’s position on our nation’s response to September 11, to the war on terror in Iraq, or our President, one can appreciate these compassionate poems.
Finally, to read Definite Space is to witness a deeply personal journey, and in the magic that is poetry, to embark on that same journey. The poems startle the reader with intimate images and language; as I read the text, I often felt as though I were intruding into private and often painful reflections, yet the printed words on the page confirmed my invitation. Somewhere in the manuscript, however, the speaker’s journey and the reader’s journey merged. Images and phrases resonated with me—I recognized myself in the poetry. To read Definite Space is to read pieces of ourselves.
Rachel Lintula
Department of Writing Studies
University of Minnesota Duluth
In Ann Iverson's newest poetry collection we witness a remarkable American poet keeping faith with language despite uncommon and common human sorrows and fears. As her step-son serves his country in Iraq, she gives to her readers a brilliant and intimate portrait of those who love and suffer at home. These beautiful and tender poems cut to the quick and we enter the psychic lives of those who learn to wait. Definite Space makes this story of war real, but the book also opens to other spaces that captivate our attention and imaginations. As always in Iverson's books, the animals of the world come close, and do their totemic work which this poet notes unerringly. As always, deliberations about faith, nature, and the nature of love suffuse these pages. No one has written this book. In her candor, and with her great gifts as poet, Iverson binds us to her side and we go with her, we see the world differently and with more tenderness, thanks to these poems.
Deborah Keenan author of Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems
In this time of terror and conflict, Americans are confused by partisan politics, but Ann Iverson knows that "the heart clashes with the cliché[s]" of war and peace. The step mother of a soldier serving twice in Iraq, she offers instead a clear-eyed witness to the coexistence of valor and insanity, distant pain and the tender wounds that daily pierce the heart. At once intimate and reserved, these poems embody and offer a kind of strength found only in poetry.
Richard Jones author of Apropos of Nothing
The poems in Ann Iverson's second book evidence her growing assurance as a poet. Her realm is the inner experience of grief and joy, war and love. Her lines are precise and deeply felt and so readily enter the reader's heart.
Lawrence Sutin author of All is Change: The Two Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism to the West
Definite Space measures the emptiness left behind when a son goes to war; it describes the space of “wired” sleepless nights and anxious days. These poems help readers understand what it means to have a child in a war—the fears of his departure and the joy of his return. Ann Iverson allows us an intimate glimpse into a life lived halfway between here and over there.
Joyce Sutphen author of Naming the Stars