The Joy of Carol Smallwood's Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms

Aline Soules

In our modern world and complex lives, we live in "compartments"-home, school, town, nature-the kind of compartments and realms Carol Smallwood explores, giving us what we know and questioning what we don't.  "The Morning Warbler" may be seen "if one walks the bogs," she writes, "but does it sing in the morning?"  What do we really know?  Smallwood raises questions even as she leads us into a consideration of our own world with a direct, matter-of-fact approach.  "Why Do Women Ask First  about their children / when meeting other / women?"  or "After a / hysterectomy did they package your remains in a / paper sack like the gizzard, heart, liver, neck, / inside a roasting chicken? 

Everything is delightfully jumbled, but beautifully detailed.  "The Sewing Box," just like Smallwood's compartments, is filled with its own sub-compartments-thread bag, needle assortment, tray, and others-each, in turn, filled with its own details, whether a "myriad of spools," "potholder loops," or "a ring of white crocheted pineapples."  She ties these objects together in the poem and also from poem to poem.  For example, she sews the ring of pineapples on a "new J. C. Penney's case"; later, in the "Town" section, she gives us a poem called "J. C. Penney litany" with its "Flannel, Poplin, Wool, Cotton, Chambray, Chamois, Corduroy, Micro-suede" shirts and its "Amber, Indigo, Basil, Blue Abyss, Oatmeal, Olive, Espresso, Mushroom" colors, all in the "men's section" with "not a man in sight." 

The joy of these compartments is that they are all linked:  the women's objects from "The Sewing Box" and the array in the men's section of the "J.C. Penney Litany"; the ants and spiders from the "Nature" section and the "Black Holes" from the "Science" section; and the questions that range through the book from "What'd happened to the Chinese damask / robe Nicolet had worn greeting the Winnebago's at Green Bay?" to all the answers the poet would "like to know"--"why snow's white" or "Why we know more of / the surface of the / Moon than ourselves."

Everything builds on her prologue-how we live between "the highest mountain / and the deepest ocean" and how we are all these compartments rolled into one.  In this collection, the reader can experience a journey through our shared world, a journey beautifully guided by this skilled and generous poet.


Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms
By Carol Smallwood
Anaphora Literary Press, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-937-53600-8


Reviews


2013
2012

The Grittiness and Challenge of Zadie Smith's NW
Charlie Kennedy


Minnesotan Dragons in Mindy Mejia’s The Dragon Keeper
Inge Lamboo


Pianos and Poems: Oni Buchanan's Must a Violence
John Gibbs


Verbal Tumbleweeds: Davy Rothbart's My Heart is an Idiot
Catherine Wargo Roberts


As Labyrinthine as the Streets of Moscow: Caroline Clark's Saying Yes in Russian
paul kavanagh


A Bell Ringing in a Place Thought Dead: Safe as Houses
Michelle Boise


Purple Passages and Captain Poetry’s Sucker Punch
Patrick James Dunagan


On Lecturing Poetically: Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey
John Gibbs


Travels in Puerto Rico
Charlie Kennedy


Breaking New Ground: Between Heaven and Here
Erin Berman


Striking Thought for Organic Issues: Traci Chee’s Consonant Sounds for Fish Songs
Charlie Kennedy


Invest in Stock: Norman Stock's Pickled Dreams Naked
John Gibbs


As if it Fell from the Sun: Celebrating Poetry from EtherDome
Chelsea DeRose


They, Too, Sing America: Buckley & Ott's Poets' Guide to America
John Gibbs


Renegade Documents:
Tlemcen or Places of Writing & Opera Omnia
Patrick James Dunagan


Something Out There: Catherine Chandler’s This Sweet Order
Jonathon Penny


Jennifer Miller's Daring The Year of the Gadfly
Eric D. Goodman


Coastal Poetry: Dear Oxygen and California Redemption Value
Patrick James Dunagan


The Cosmology of Transience: Kevin Opstedal's California Redemption Value
Alex Rieser


Collective Memory in Evelyn Posamentier's Poland at the Door
Trena Machado


We Have to Stop Being Fearful: Paul Kavanagh’s Iceberg
Charles Haddox


A Life's Work: Sheer Indefinite by Skip Fox
Patrick James Dunagan


Syntax as Music in Arisa White’s Hurrah’s Nest
Karen Biscopink


Alone Together: David Landrum's The Impossibility of Epithalamia
Robbi Nester


Nature, Terror and Renewal in Zilka Joseph’s What Dread
Michelle Regalado Deatrick


Meditating on Aline Soules' Meditation on Woman
Carol Smallwood


A Little Night Music: Kenneth Frost’s Night Flight
Christina Cook


The Joy of Carol Smallwood's Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms
Aline Soules

2011