Seedlip and Sweet Apple by Arra Lynn RossMilkweed Editions, 2010

Before reading this book I’m not sure I could have told you the name of the founder of the Shakers. Now I can: it was Mother Ann Lee, and this book of poems tells the story of her life. The three sections of the book are arranged chronologically: the first, the Word of Life, tells the story of her early years in England, starting not with her birth but with her baptism (at the age of six). We learn she had a brother, lived in Manchester, worked in a cotton mill. Most of the poems are narrated in the first person, most in Ann Lee’s voice but some in the voices of others (her brother William, for example). I love this, from “Early Work”:

I walk home when night is folded tight like a prayer;
wrapped in the woolen overcoat William wore before his arms got too long,
wishing I knew the names of trees; (5)

And this, also early in the book: a young Ann is arguing with her mother (who’s baking bread) about marriage—after screaming and slapping her mother, Ann talks about wishing

I could fold the world over
and make it rise up right. (8)

On a first read-through, though, the book as a whole was more mildly interesting to me than exciting. I liked the mix of prose poems and free verse with line breaks; I liked the use of Mother Ann’s own words and the use of other texts—reworked fragments from Sappho, advertisements and news from a 1773 newspaper (The Manchester Mercury). I thought it was perhaps that Mother Ann feels so distant: distant in time but perhaps more distant in values and experiences. I thought also that maybe I wasn’t in the mood for reading poetry, or in the mood for this specific kind of historical narrative-filled poetry. On a second reading, I still felt that way, a little. There were moments where it felt like too much information was crammed into the poems when I’d rather have gotten it via the end notes or an introduction: one poem, “Found,” includes this: “We, the poor, sit in the back pews, sometimes even stand for the full two hours. My mother is a pious woman, brushes our hair Sundays (all five boys and three girls) and ties it up with ribbon she keeps in her good wood box. Made us scrub down the night before: knees jammed high in the washbasin, scouring backs and necks on the young ones till they’re red and raw, shivering more from the rough touch than cold” (9). That “We, the poor” sentence seems too heavy-handed for me, as does the parenthetical note about how many siblings Ann had, though I love the images of the rest of it, the ribbon, the wood box, the Saturday night scouring.

But as I kept re-reading, I found more to like: the solid details of “Egg”, the ecstasy of “Learn to Sing by Singing”, the cruelty and abundance of the world and of nature, the grace of “Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy”, the lines, below, from “Make the Bridge the Truth That Is Coming”:

I left to walk among the trees
that edge the stream, singing God,
I am a woman listening.

A kingfisher lit on a branch
and I stood still, watching his breath
rise and fall in his breast, my breath
rise and fall in my breast. I turned
to see more clearly, but he flew
upstream. A branch broke from the tree. (47-48)


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2 responses to “Seedlip and Sweet Apple by Arra Lynn RossMilkweed Editions, 2010”

  1. Christy Avatar

    I used to read poetry more. It can be daunting to get back into it, because slow reading and re-reading is usually needed for the full effect. It can be hard to switch gears for that kind of reading.

  2. Heather Avatar
    Heather

    Christy, yes, I think that’s why I tend to read slim volumes of poetry rather than great big ones – I usually don’t slow down enough my first time through, so I tend to read the book from start to finish, then read it again, slowing down the second time around!

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