THE ONE RIGHT TOUCH; poems by Katharine Coles; Ahsahta Press; 53 pages.
When I read Katharine Coles, I think of D.H. Lawrence; the way Lawrence held the messy, visceral side of life up to our notions of sophistication and culture. It's actually a Freudian model: the animal "id," the refined "ego," the writer as "super-ego" moderating the dispute.
And in her new book, Coles plays all the parts.
Including a version of Lady Chatterley.
When not writing poetry, Coles is an assistant professor of English at Westminster College. She is also a product of the University of Utah Creative Writing Program, a reason for the program's Rolls-Royce reputation.
University writing programs produce as many casualties as successes, however. Young writers often come to disparage the popular but lack the skills to run with their mentors. Many students drown in midstream, hating what they can do, pining for what they can't.
But Katharine Coles - like Lawrence - has "come through." And she has brought some hard-won aesthetics with her. Her poems - like jigsaw puzzle pieces - offer a unified vision. She has no "signature poem" (contrary to what Richard Howard suggests in his prolix introduction). Her minor poems are not auditions pointing to a star performance. The poems are mosaic tiles. She's compiling an oeuvre.
True, like many first books this one suffers from some self-indulgence, an urgency to "put it all in." The obligatory elegies appear, the homages to friends and parents, the various experiments with tone and voice.
But for the most part the poems gel as a collection. The pain of one poem draws "sympathy pain" from another; the bliss of one line rests behind the bliss in others.
In the four-part poem "Cultivation," for instance, the poet teeters on her "dangerous party shoes" while her escort tears the hide from a roadkill. Once the poet gets to the party, however - a world full of "women among chandeliers" and "red and emerald silks" - she insulates herself from the whole barbaric incident, only to be confronted by the hostess, who reveals a collection of elephant curios and confesses a longing to sleep among beasts.
That tension between the animal and the angelic surfaces in almost every poem. The poet's mother, after being threatened at gunpoint, attends her singing lesson and sings "the best she's ever sung."
In "Gathering" (which plays off nicely against a brace of "Hunting" poems), the red "meat on the platter" clashes with the delicacy of a neighbor's roses.
In "Letter from a Friend on Her Anniversary," violence and refinement collide when the poet learns her poetic friend is the victim of abuse:
He touches my cheek, the bruises
still rising as they did that night
when I told you it doesn't matter.
Believe me, I don't shy
from his hand. I wait for it
to coax a blush, a bruise, blood
where the skin gives. It's all the same
in love. . . .
In the end, "The One Right Touch" is the work of a wonderful - though still maturing - poet. Where so many young poets tend to chirp, or bellow, or speak with the earnest concern of cancer specialists, Coles finds "the one right voice."
As I put her book aside, I remembered a scene from Mexico. A woman from Madrid - born to the manor - had invited me to the celebration following her grand-daughter's baptism. The woman was dressed impeccably, each fold of lace, each color, perfectly placed. Then I saw her smile, grab a small loaf of "peasant bread" and tear out a passionate bite.
The image might have come from Lawrence, again - Mexico's "Plumed Serpent."
The Lady of Spain could have been Katharine Coles.