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Running Like A Woman With Her Hair on Fire by Martina Newberry
A review by David Fraser
Martina Newberry speaks to us of connections and disconnections, relationships built and relationships broken, frozen moments, childhood remembrances, the yearning for love and the pain of loss. In the opening poem "Links" "three girls, children really" are running, running as the title of the collection suggests. The narrator asks which child she was and were they all ready "for the difference contours of this earth", and did you wish to be broken". In these questions there is something a little frantic in the running, the not looking back, and the questions. This poem sets this sense of something fragile that pervades the collection as a whole. In "A Yellow Truck' the "rideaway, rideaway" rhythm is set for the narrator's escape, an escape she doesn't take. In "Gay Repartee" the narrator is the trapped victim, an only child abused by a family friend, battered and denigrated by a husband. She trudges on apologizing "over and over/running like a woman with her hair on fire." She asks why she keeps repeating such subservient behaviour. In "Politically Correct in America", Martina talks of terrorists and being crazy and connects the plight that betrayed women find themselves in when abandoned to be that of the crazy world of the terrorist where desperate measures are required for survival. We get the sense just as in the running imagery of other poems that these victims need to keep moving on, to keep on going regardless of the difficulties that face them.
This sense of abandonment is reflected in other poems. In "John, to the Seven Churches" the narrator is disembodied, a girl on an ice flow, drifting away and she like Cassandra will tell the truth, will "tell all who will listen/about the way it used to be", but we wonder who is going to hear her as she floats far out from the shore and who will bear witness. Similarly in "A Chill Over the Water" there is this same sense of abandonment, of being somehow adrift within relationships, out in a watery sea where passing boats pay no attention, where no one is on deck to see any frantic calls for help. Martina says, "These are the songs of ice-bound boats" and "Still we shout and wave our shirts as flags." Relationships are frozen in crisis and no one is there to rescue the lovers, the children, abandoned and dancing.
In many poems there are captured moments, slices of time held in precious memory. "The Orchard" starts with the memory of a mother's and father's warning to "stay clean, be careful" contrasted by an aunt's warning, "don't rile the bees". The children's act of wandering into the trees as far as they dared and stepping on the overripe fruit in bare feet conjures up the Garden of Eden, both tempting and mysterious. It is here that Craig and the narrator go deeper into the woods and there is that moment on the verge of contact with its exhilaration, not consummated but exciting, just on the brink of riling the bees.
In "On The First Day of October" we begin with snapshots, time frozen in moments tying a shoelace, riding a bicycle. The poet stops to reflect on these simple things, perhaps happy remembrances before life became more complicated, before things happened, before a friend, or the narrator's other self became small through cruel circumstance, before she became "artfully carved up". In the last lines that invite a moment of healing over conversation and a drink "too hot to drink" unfortunately there is still a disconnection, a distancing, and a coldness. Winter is coming and there is "just the smallest bit of ice/on the car windshield". In "Hearst Beach" a moment is caught on a walk along a beach to an abandoned warehouse that was once vibrant with men hard at work. The description presents a haunting sense of change, aging and the passage of time. In "Things I Thought of in the Shower" we get this contemplative mood set squarely in the present. The thoughts are metaphysical. The narrator prefers her shadow to her reflection, a sketch rather than a photograph, a watercolour wash to a mirror image. In each there is a haziness, something definitely hidden. She talks about " a second chance for the world" but this can also relate to a deep need for a second chance for people and their relationships. "This moment the only moment…/this moment, this Now that no one shares/ with anyone is all we have." firmly roots us in the present, roots the poet and her poem in her life. "If it goes on sale, I'll buy this soap again" whimsically brings up back to the mundane, the worldly everyday occurrence of washing ourselves, with its symbolism of cleansing, rebirth and purification.
In "When You Saw Her, You Knew…" a haunting feeling is captured in the moments of memory. The mythic femme fatale of growing up whose "black eyes burned the boys to ash" appears working in the office of the narrator's husband, and the narrator knows that danger from her past and sees "the way he smiled at her, saw the axe in his hand". This last line tells it all, the loss, the anger, the hurt, and the truncation of a relationship.
Relationships between individuals and relationships between a person and the environment are strongly evident. Individuals find ways of knowing themselves, of knowing heartbreak, of knowing deceit and betrayal, of knowing in the Taoist sense the need to be awake, to be deliberate and to get on with their lives. Martina lyrically weaves a spider's web of lost love, pain, abandonment, abuse, and deceit that creeps up on the reader with such lines as "…I understood the sound/ blood makes chasing itself down my straight/ white legs…" or "putting all we knew together into your mouth" or "the failed crumbs of a banquet coupling". This collection celebrates the raw truth inherent in relationships. Life is not neat and tidy. Messy things happen; pain and suffering are encountered as individuals take risks, become vulnerable, and in the process there is energy, a deliberate sense of being alive and carrying on.
Running Like A Woman With Her Hair on Fire is a lyrical enlightening read full of candid observation, pathos and vitality. You will inevitably pick this collection up time and again to revisit and savour its messages and meaning.
Available at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, FROOGLE, and from Red Hen directly.
E-mail: Contact Martina Newberry
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To read more poetry and short fiction by David Fraser click on Poetry and Short Fiction respectively.