BOOKMONGER
Poet grapples with grief
‘In Accelerated Silence’
offers refl ective poetry
The past week brought me news of the
passing of yet another valued friend — the
entire past year, it seems, has been full of
these unwelcome surprises. Grieving has
become commonplace in my household.
Addressing that same terrible sense of
loss, “In Accelerated Silence” is a new book
of poetry by Spokane-based Brooke Matson.
“I haven’t been to mass since Death
(capital d) entered the narrative and sent my
heart palpitating with rage at nothing in par-
ticular,” she writes.
And in another poem: “When people
ask, How are you? / my mouth fi lls with
fl annel.”
But Matson fi nds her voice through
the written word. She used poetry to work
through her grief after her husband’s death
from cancer.
As fi nely crafted as these poems are, pre-
cise in their imagery and careful in their
wording, they are also ragged with emotion.
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Whether it’s taking the teakettle off the
heat when it begins to shriek on the stove
or fi nding the energy to get out of bed and
commence another day as a widow, Mat-
son’s writing is keenly visceral.
A poem titled “The Day Before” actu-
ally describes the evening — now a wist-
ful memory — before the doctor calls with
bad news.
“Red Giant” describes the scorched-
earth effect of chemotherapy — devastat-
ing, yet also the stuff of stars.
“Neurosurgery” is about the medical
specialty but also much more.
If an abundant, meaningful life can so
easily come to an end due to a mass of
unruly cells, or the slice of a knife, Mat-
son ponders, are we all just experiments in
physics, chemistry and biology? What about
dimensions beyond the three we’re aware
of? How much can we actually know?
Many of her poems deal with these ideas.
On another tangent, she muses about
fruit – particularly apples and pomegranates
— providing different takes on their sym-
bolism and physical properties.
Fruit and physics may seem like an odd
juxtaposition — although her poem called
“Newton’s Apple” does connect the two
themes.
A third element in many of these poems
is the frequent invoking of color. Matson
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recollects a
discussion
about colors in
kindergarten.
Later on down
the line, she
remembers
a science class-
room where the teacher shone spotlights of
blue and green and red on the wall to pro-
duce, magically, white light.
There are also poems that deal with the
absence of color — the infi nity of black. In
her soul-racking poem, “Law of the Conser-
vation of Mass,” Matson describes perhaps
the most dispiriting color of all:
“Outside, the starlings sing
the afternoon to grey while lilacs
abandon their fragrance.”
This slim volume offers up odes, ele-
gies,and sonnets that resemble no sonnets
I have ever before been acquainted with,
except that they present in 14 lines.
This may sound like a jumble, but “In
Accelerated Silence” is actually a multifac-
eted way of grappling with mourning and
coming into a new place where grief still
abides but no longer prevails.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd
McMichael, who writes this weekly column
focusing on the books, authors and publish-
ers of the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at
bkmonger@nwlink.com.
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