Hard Blessings
Review of
Hard Blessings by Patrick Carrington,
Main Street Rag (2008), 42 pages, $10, ISBN 13:978-1-59948-115-9. Reviewed by Paula Ashley.
Patrick Carrington teaches creative writing in New Jersey and his poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals. His chapbook,
Hard Blessings, starts with a love poem. “Patterns” uses the metaphor of needlepoint to draw us into this love: I feel sewed into you. Love poems are notoriously difficult and, wondering where this is going, I find my mind quibbling about the title. I would prefer “Tapestry” as more fitting with the needlepoint image. However, I feel his love and am engaged. Turning the page to “Jonagolds” I am now plunged into grief and the loss of this love: “At first frost I poured you,/watched coming winter blow/your ashes to glass across the lake.” These lines leave me cold, empty, and sad.
The rest of the chapbook takes on a journey through the byways of grief. The third poem “Cul de Sacs” is written in the second person as if Carrington is looking at himself from a distance: “Let’s say one night you want to forget.” He has entered that stage of grief where everything seems remote and unreal. But this emotional distance doesn’t last long, as Patrick picks up the first person narrator again in the fourth poem.
The thread of poems takes us through childhood memories of a crazy aunt, advice for his son, the loss of his grandmother. The landscape reflects his mood as September yields to winter. The narrator wanders the bleak streets of lonely towns, lingers on barstools, and meets women who do not penetrate his heart. The town itself shuts down as the factory closes: even the alley cats are thinking in terms of goodbye. In “Nowhere” the book closes without redemption as the narrator mourns the aging of his own body, the hoarding of his memories, and the longing for: that face/that might turn my weary body toward home.
Hard Blessings is a poignant journey through loss yet lingers in the loss, instead of taking us on a path that might eventually lead to recovery and the finding of meaning in life. Having experienced the loss of a child myself, I find nothing here to guide me or others through grief and back into the world. I find no spiritual exploration of the meaning of life and death. Poetry is one way we connect to our feelings and resolve them, but Carrington seems to be using his poetry as an excuse for publishing instead. I don’t want to seem too harsh as the poems themselves are well crafted with memorable images and deft use of metaphor. Perhaps it would have been better for Carrington to wait until he had resolved his grief and moved forward in life in order to give us a more memorable experience. Resolution is an inside job. It can be aided by writing but does not come from finding another as Carrington implies in his last poem.