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Double Helix For Dave, David Jr. and Alice, And in
memory of Nancy
The Bridge Poet Lore Washington Review
The
Bridge, Winter 1998, Volume 7, #1
Double Helix by Barri Armitage Washington Writer's Publishing House, 1993
Reviewed by Nancy Naomi Carlson Barn Armitage's Double Helix immediately creates tension through its title image of two intersecting spirals- Watson and Crick's DNA model-which Armitage uses as a metaphor for the twisting strands of love and sorrow. The comparison is apt, since grief is an inextricable part of love, especially when a relationship ends, and love can be an antidote to grief. At the heart of this moving and powerful first collection of poems is the death of Armitage's daughter, killed at age twenty-two on her bicycle by a drunk driver. Although this event is foreshadowed in the first section, it is not until Section II that a concentration of such poems appears. Armitage heads this section with an excerpt from one of the poems her daughter had written using the metaphor of a bicycle crash-a chilling irony in view of later events. Armitage skillfully places this epigraph in a key location, whose full impact is only realized as the book progresses, thereby skirting the temptation for sentimentality. Although we will have fully experienced the events leading to her daughter's death, (the death itself, as well as its aftermath by the end of the second section), we are given only hints of these matters, bits and pieces out of sequence that increase the tension, rather than full-blown accounts of what occurred. Her last visit home is recalled in "Gathering." We should've called her Halley, looping back after finals to leave her traces-a glove or sock for us to mail. In the same poem, the family gathers one final time. As the Earth's shadow hollowed the moon and fall gripped the last trees, we drove to Elliot's Funeral Home. Music followed us down the hall. It should be noted that Armitage's craft is at its best when she describes such poignant scenes. The long vowel sounds and the repetition of the "ow" sound (like a moan) in "shadow," "hollowed," and "followed" are consistent with the underlying mood. In "The Cake," Armitage describes her first time baking after her daughter's death, but it is here that the most graphic details of the accident occur. I reach for the canister and run out of sugar, fill a cup with yours from the A&P- a cup that measures a cup if I don't pack too closely, if I allow you to ride your bike into the night, earphones playing you happy until you're hit from behind, tangled, and tossed into the November sky. You lay in the night, stayed flat on the ground as if you knew- Armitage's dreams infuse her poems and provide information of what actually happened in a context of fantasy. It is not surprising that Armitage would choose the vehicle of the dream, because it is stated in "Journal: Outliving Our Firstborn" that "dreams restore the dead." The fantasy to undo the death and reestablish communication are poignant in "After Words." Last night the scene changed, almost worth the wait for sleep- four boys in the car that killed her were chasing us. She outwitted them, sneaking into a house and out the back. In one of the strongest poems in this section, "Bedding Down," Armitage places herself at her daughter's grave. Tracing her name, I picture her at four, pretending sleep beneath the petaled garden of grandmother's quilt. The corners of a grin begin to play against the silence of her face as she waits for me to tap her arm, magic godmother, bringing cocoa topped with cream. Armitage imagines herself digging through the grass and soil, the layers of clay until she can "tear off the crimped sheet to quiet her shivers,/ massage her stiff arm until it wakes." Armitage's gift of choosing powerful images and allowing them to speak for themselves is evident in his poem. The second strand of the double helix, love, first appears in "Square Dance," the opening poem of this collection. Blue-checked cotton made to match, we court and fluff like cranes. Hip to hip we swing, your eyes the pivot for which there is no call. The simplicity of the words and their subtle humor make their meaning even more potent. The double meaning of "call," as well as the short, clipped lines that imitate a square dance caller's directions add to the effectiveness of the poem. The title poem, "Double Helix,' chronicles the history of Armitage's marriage. Armitage's artistry is seen in the final lines of part one, which convey her belief that love freely given to others can help ease loss: When the widow shared her food with Elijah, it lasted through the drought- lately it seems, the more I bake, the more the oil rises in the jar. In "The Ultimate Harlequin Romance: Thirtieth Anniversary" Armitage gives her fullest description of the double helix metaphor and the importance of love for survival. You and I ride the twisting strands of a double helix, slide down and tumble off, our wind knocked out, then hold to the rungs and hoist back up, pausing to gather what can be salvaged before the spiral begins its turn and we fall, sometimes more heavily, sometimes screaming or wearing black. Dulled, we turn on each other or turn our backs, then slowly circle to face again, groping toward that first party, senses reaching beyond sense, still learning to ride out the story past the end. Riding, as in bicycle riding, haunts Armitage; the image reappears in unexpected places such as here. In addition to the tension created between the strands of grief and love, it is also possible to see in this collection of poems an intermingling of the strands of science and faith. Science is, of course, reflected in the book's title, Double Helix. In the course of reading these poems we learn that forty pounds of dust settles on the average house each year, that stomach lining is replaced in seven days, and that, according to a national survey on sexual desire, men peak at nineteen women at twice that. Armitage displays a logical, scientific mind to human nature and daily events. Even death has a scientific explanation: "I only knew-in a moment/the clock could stop, and nothing/start its beating again" ("Misery and Company"). Yet references to the Old Testament abound here hero~ the story of the widow and Elijah, an epigraph from Psalm 103:14 ("For He knoweth our frame..."), and an epigraph from "Song of Solomon." Indeed the opening epigraph, "The Gardener," is an affirmation of Armitage's faith that things happen according to a divine plan. 'Trading on Gravity," the last poem of the book, combines all the major strands in Armitage's work: grief and love, science and faith. It is no accident that the final image is one of transcendence over loss. ("But tonight/ as I roll close, your touch makes again/ the moment earth becomes air").
Poet Lore, Fall 1993, Volume 8, #3WASHINGTON WRITERS' PUBLISHING HOUSE 1992 POETRY WINNERS Barn Armitage, Double Helix, Washington Writers' Publishing House, 1993, $10.00, paper, 64 pp. Elaine Upton, Children of Apartness, Washington Writers' Publishing House, 1993, $10.00, paper, 64 pp. Reviewed by Sheila Bender The Washington Writers' Publishing House, a non-profit cooperative press, sponsors an annual manuscript competition for poets who live within a 60-miles radius of The District of Columbia. The two women whose manuscripts were chosen in 1992 and published in 1993 are both teachers. Both write of violence in this world, of being witness to it, of being affected deeply and personally by it; they write working to overcome pain through love and nurturing. Barn Armitage's poetry takes place among her family, present and past: her husband, the son she takes to college, the daughter killed in a tragic accident while she was in college, and her parents and older relatives from Ohio. 11cr early life in Akron, Ohio blends with her later adult life in Georgia and Maryland. The actions in her days recall for her the images of her youth, and her dreams at night recall the tragedy in her life and those in the lives of others. Each of her poems, however, is an affirmation of love and the possible reworking of a life after the loss of a young adult child. Her poems document the moments in grieving. They tell us that even in grief, love of the present moment and of others is necessary and heals. Double Helix is arranged in three sections. A poem entitled "The Gardener" Begins the collection as epigraph. In it, Armitage says the gardener knows "the right reasons for pruning down to ugly stubs," and also "knows / the stalks will stand all night as if remembering / over and over the feel of the saw / as each cut brought sap to the surface. She says the stalks will "stand in the cold night not cold enough / for frost, as if trying to remember / the new bloom." Like the gardener's work, Armitage's poetry is born of knowing "the good enough / reasons for the mass of dead brush whirling / and writhing at the edge of the dream." The poet inside Armitage, like the gardener, will return "before dawn to smooth again / the sealer... on the wounds." And
the sealer is applied in section one. First there is the memory in
"Square Dance" of her husband swinging her round and round
until they are the "pure spin seen I from space - blue earth /
banded with drifts of white." In "Gifts," the poet
recounts times with the man she loves from teenage [years] to having
infants to preparing in middle age a favored perfume and a cake. The
poet tells us that "lately it seems, the more I bake, / the more
the oil rises in the jar." In the third poem of the book,
"Star Attraction," we are told of their daughter's death when
the poet recounts the many moves the couple had made: With the turning of time, we tested the light from our windows, walked at dusk watching other lamps glow as moves left scattered behind us carpets scrubbed to the wall, a son's playhouse, and pots of flowers overflowing from
a daughter's death. As
section one progresses, we see the poet visiting Anazasi ruins,
accompanying her aunt's body back to Ohio for the funeral, cleaning out
her senile father's garage, comparing his pack rat behavior to her own,
treasuring dishes from childhood, and taking her son to college. Then in
the last [of that] section's poems, we see her son visit home, and we meet
Arrnitage's dead daughter in the way Armitage sees her son, "I'm
jolted by the trick photography / her mouth blurring over his, her
lips playing I at the corners just before his laugh." We find out
her son "lives out his twenty-second year, / the age his sister
reached..." At the end of a walk in the snow, when the poet's son
goes to the mailbox and waves a letter he has received, the poet
surmises it is from his girlfriend. The son "waves it in his
glove-thick hand," and we are moved by the poet's openness not only
to her love for her husband and her son but to her future with others
she can love. Section two
is entirely about her daughter's death in a bicycle accident, It is
about absorbing the details of the death of her child, of the life of
her child, of her mourning and that of her husband.
The poet takes the words her daughter used defining recursions
during her last supper at home and turns them to the task of this
absorption, of this mourning, of acceptance. "...you build
something," her daughter told them, "by assuming it already
exists." (from "Gathering"). On another day, the poet
writes in 'journal: Outliving
Our Firstborn": My mind drifted to blackbirds: one flew away, and the others spread their wings to hide the space, chattering as if to teach the fence how nine might add up to ten - smart bankers shuffling assets, relabeling loss - the way that dreams restore
the dead. In
the penultimate poem of section two, "Fall Ritual," the poet
says: I savor the feel of earth, then sprinkle it, pack it like snow. Bone of my bone, you were packed in me, grew from meat I chewed, from milk I drank - seed buried in seed you
carded to the ground. How
else to feel her connection with her daughter and with life? When snow's patches have melted and the flurry of birds returns like the rush of rain, I will kneel at this earth's pocket as flesh of the springtime's flesh begins
to crown. In
section three of Double Helix, grief is sorted through in dreams, in
connections to others and in a marriage that must outlast this story of
loss. What rises here is lucid and visible. There are dreams of coffins
and sludge-"covered fossils and the touching notion of redialing an
airline's busy switchboard to hear a favorite message, "You will
not be disconnected" ("Convention"). After eight years,
the poet hears a man read about his child's death and reports she
"waited in back, fearing the circles / a pebble can suddenly churn,
then opened / his book to the poem I'd wept for / and walked in his
direction" ("Misery and Company"). By the last poem in
the book, "Trading on Gravity," the poet has mended herself
and her love: Earth covers our losses: the great ones, boxed and buried; the small, 100,000 pieces a minute - flaking skin, salt, saliva, lint. Our donations increase: more hair in the drain, more sweat at tennis. But tonight as I roll close, your touch makes again the moment earth becomes air.
Washington Review, October/November 1993 POETRY
BOOK REVIEWS
Double Helix by Barn Armltage, Washington Writers' Publishing House, 1993. $10 paper, 72 pp. Children of Apartness by Elaine Maria Upton, Washington Writers' Publishing House, 1993,4100 Blackthorne Street, Chevy Chase, MD 20815. $10 paper, 72 pp.
Reviewed
by Betty Parry DOUBLE HELIX by Barn Armitage and Children of Apartness by Elaine Maria Upton, the 1992 winners of the Washington Writers' Publishing House poetry competition, are excellent choices for a number of reasons. The books, though very different, have some qualities in common, e.g. an authenticity of interior vision and a belief in the possibility of survival with dignity; one survives personal tragedy, the other documents survival of political repression. Both poets pay attention to the importance of language in transforming experience into moving poems. Each focuses on love as a healing force. At a time when first books by many poets contain "safe" poems that lack passion and take no chances, it is refreshing to read poets that are willing to take personal and political risks. Double Helix takes its title from the DNA model of the genetic code: the circular staircase. Armitage uses the image of the double spiral ladder to denote life's joy and grief-events that Intersect time. The book translates her personal tragedy, the death of her 22-year-old daughter in 1982, killed by a drunk driver • into poems of strength and power, poems that Stephen Corey, in The Georgia Review, calls "some of the finest elegaic writing of recent years." The book is divided into three sections. In the title poem, "Double Helix," the first part ["Gifts"] deals with passage of time and continuity of relationships. ...We learned even space isn't empty: light and sound stream out, wasted, waiting to be used... Past fifty now,… Our shelves bulge with sweaters and books as gift options narrow like arteries,...
[The second part, "Star Attraction," continues]
...you read to me of two stars discovered locked in gravity's embrace:...
[and ends] ...The silence reaches deeper than breath as you lean over me to pull the shade. With not a hint of self-pity, the poems celebrate the life and memory of her daughter and affirm the strength of the relationships with her husband and son. The poem "Gathering" describes her daughter's last visit and the night of the crash. As the earth's shadow hollowed the moon... ………………. We drove to Elliot's Funeral Home. Music followed us down the hall. I made myself turn that corner. "A poem is a clear expression of mixed feelings," she says, quoting Auden. Her own poems are rich in detail, understated, and rarely if ever lapse into an easy sentimentality. Barn Armitage uses lines from "Green Lights on a Bicycle," an uncannily prophetic poem written and published by her daughter Nancy in 1979, as the theme of the second section of her book.
The rain won't be ice— I won't sky—dive flip to the bottom__won't crash like a green chirping grasshopper.. Are there really brakes? This same poem by this gifted young woman begins, Somehow I wander to the dizzy peak of a drunken highway hill. Pedals freeze. Well, should I swerve and scream? Why do I laugh the bell and lean on the wind... “Journal: Outliving Our Firstborn" tells of pain, loss and at the same time comfort of shared memories with her husband, "Sometimes his warmth seeps/ through me as if passion could reach/ far enough to heal." The same poem, "My mind drifted/ to blackbirds: ... -smart bankers shuffling assets,/ relabeling loss-the way that dreams/ restore the dead." She understands the importance of generational continuity. "Family Tree," for her father says, Tell me again of Thomas and Mary his bride, of the son who survived and the land and the oaks no longer marked. Tell me again. I want to get it straight. "And a Time to Keep," biblical in title, deals with survival and loss. It describes the memories that grandmother's Blue Willow china evokes In a lyrical mode, "Chinese sweethearts, changed into swallows,/ hover as if ready to kiss or collide." Her poems explore contradictory emotions, love and loss, pleasure and pain with balance and sensitivity. Her images are convincing; she melds nature Imagery with quotidian details effectively. The depth of her grief Is clear but equally impressive is her refusal to allow it to overwhelm her. She writes with compassion and concern about the plight of others in "Seven Loaves and a Few Small Fish" and "Marks." The love poems for her husband and son are quietly intense and deeply passionate. She doesn't let emotion get In the way of craft. "The Ultimate Harlequin Romance:/ Thirtieth Anniversary," uses the title image, You and I ride the twisting strands of a double helix, slide down and tumble off, our wind knocked out,.... senses reaching beyond sense, still learning to ride out the story past the end.
.................. “Not just collections of poems, both these books have a unity of purpose that transport the reader into the worlds described by the poets. Each uses a rich lode of language to define very complex experiences and each has developed her own individual poetic voice.
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