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Room with us because it’s only when you get close to these poems that you see how good they really are. As it should be. All good poems command our full attention. It’s as if the poet were saying, “Take the time and care to read these poems that I put into writing them.” A reciprocal situation, an unwritten contract between writer and reader. Right from the start, the poet says, “My sport is evading morphing decay.” One way to convey an appreciation of Writing Between the Lines is to take a close look at three aspects of these thirty poems about what it means to be alive: metaphor, self and other, and invention.

Nolcha Fox’s imagination, alive and well throughout this book, thrives in her metaphors. In “Dog Days,” “noon, a mystic dog with paws of fire, floods the forest with loud barks of light.” Her use of synesthesia, fusing sight and sound, establishes the dog’s mystic powers. The dog becomes an energy source within the speaker. The literal meets the figurative as the dog, noon:

chases rabbits into shadow burrows,
laps coffee from my cup,
demands I change from robe to jeans
for walk through flowering fields.
It jumps into the muddy creek
and showers me with drops of sun

The dog days, far from being lackadaisical, signal an awakening. Time and place mirror the speaker’s vitality.

In “Not No,” not clock time, but felt time is the topic. “A Swiss cheese hole,” rather than being hollow, is a space filled with “probabilities and mold.”

“Platform,” “Need All,” “Hard Road,” and “Always Someone” thrive on compelling metaphors.

A poem about an end, “My Father’s Death,” poignantly begins, “My father’s last breath is still the blade / that pares and cleaves me open. I bleed cigars and Yukon Jack and armadillos.”

The relationship of self to other occurs in varied contexts. “Drunk,” spoken in first person, is set in a hotel room in which Night, Sleep, and Dawn are personified. “Night calls Dawn for room service / and curls up on the couch.”

In “City, City,” the other, a male, tells the listener at his side:

I was a red ball bounced against billboards by
circumstance.
I was a freeway under orange-barrel construction.
My angry commute was eaten by streetlights.
The city is a myth of silence.

In “Dinner,” one person speaks to another.

In “Closed for Business,” two people have reached an impasse. “We sit in silence / an ice pick couldn’t shatter.”

And “Choosing a Direction,” written in third person, concludes:

Whether to wear purple is a gamble
with the last hours of her life.
Will she choose the gangplank
instead of the roller coaster?

Lastly, there is invention.  Nolcha Fox, in previous books, has collaborated with one other poet, and, most recently, with two others. Writing Between the Lines is a departure. In this book, her poems’ first and last lines are from poems by other poets. Fox’s challenge is to write her own lines in the middle, to make something seamless, and with her facility with language and her formidable imagination, she succeeds. 

Proof of her success is found in a lyrical invocation, a poem with its first and last lines from Erica Vital-Lazare’s poem, “Aguidilla.” Here is “Braided” in its entirety.

Braided

Peel back the greening leaf
of spring, of childhood.
Reveal the virgin seeds.
Weave rivulets through fresh-turned soil.
Tell me where the flowers lay braided.

Part of Fox’s challenge is to make utterances, lines spoken in another’s voice harmonize with her distinctive voice. In poems such as “Lightning” “Place,” and “Ruins,” she succeeds.

Writing Between the Lines inventiveness differs from Nolcha Fox’s previous collaborations, but her wordplay, wit, lyricisms, imagination, and gift for metaphors remain the same. Writing, she is alone in a room with language, and reading we are alone in a room with her speaker, who has invited us in.

The book’s last poem, “Pray and Measure,” begins: “Remind me / all my prayers were answered / the moment I started praying / for what I already have …a thunderstorm, the moon.” Between the first and last lines, the speaker searches for truth. In her search, she takes the things of ordinary life and makes something extraordinary. “Pray and Measure” is a fresh, original poem, one of many in this fine book.

Purchase Link
https://www.prolificpulse.com/nolchafox

If you live in the United States, you can buy this book at a discount.