CAROLE MERTZ - REVIEW OF SMALLWOOD'S PATTERNS

Carole Mertz, poet and essayist, reviews frequently at Dreamers Creative Writing, Eclectica, Mom Egg Review, and Page & Spine. She reads in prose and poetry for MER, is book review editor at Dreamers Creative Writing, and has poems at The Ekphrastic Review, Eclectica, WestWard Quarterly, and in the 2019 Soc. of Classical Poets anthology. She is the author of Toward a Peeping Sunrise (Prolific Press, 2019).

Drawn to a Higher Consciousness
Review by Carole Mertz

Patterns: Moments in Time
By Carol Smallwood
Word Poetry, 2019
ISBN 9781625493057
$19.00, Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Moments-Time-Carol-Smallwood/dp/1625493053/ref=sr_1_3?fst=p90x%3A1&keywords=carol+smallwood&qid=1552070353&s=books&sr=1-3 

​Author of more than a dozen volumes within the past few years, and more than fifty volumes total, Carol Smallwood continues to send her creative writing into the world. As in her other poetry collections, she performs the extraordinary mixing in Patterns of everyday events with phenomena. When I read her works, I gain respect for Smallwood’s observant eye, recognizing she delves deeply into what lies before us and often creates poetic gems through use of such elements as car washes or supermarket products. That these elements blend in her poetry is not in itself surprising. But because she then wields her content into fixed poetical forms that adhere to the rhyming constrictions within that form, we see a poet unique in both voice and style and one who is highly secure in her craft.
 
Patterns: Moments in Time contains free verse along with the numerous poems in form. The latter range from triolet to tercet to villanelle to various rondeaux, with the pantoum her most frequently selected form. Sewn into her verses appear stitches of typical Smallwood themes: patches of quilting pieces, sky elements, “multi-views” of the universe, mythology, children’s games, and even a J. Robert Oppenheimer quote. The reader is enriched by the liveliness and variety of her themes.
 
Though humor is not the quality first recognized in Smallwood’s poetry, it is nevertheless present in subtle form in many of her verses. If “A Villanelle for Betsy” (p. 89) were not about dolls, we might smile at the three “old ones,” who appear in the poem as if octogenarian cronies seated against a wall chatting. But when we come to “cracked heads,” we jump to attention, gripped by the humor of the image.
 
Another humorous poem is one in which a foot becomes stuck in plaster. (“The Plaster Was Warm, p. 74.) “I’d waited / barefoot and was Cinderella / for a podiatry prince,” the poet states.
 
One of the most admirable poems is “A Supermarket Triptych.” (p.59) The required eight lines per stanza follow the formal rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB (here capital letters indicate repeated lines). Smallwood adheres fully to the triolet, a form which dates back to the Middle Ages. (Reading closely we again detect Smallwood subtle humor.) The first stanza follows:

Did the passersby think I was a restaurant owner instead of there
to enjoy the colossal bags and jars Alice in Wonderland size?
A Motown tune belted out love and emotions—places I didn’t dare.
Did the passersby think I was a restaurant owner instead of there
to wonder, check the sales, notice anything new, leisurely stare
as I sip my courtesy cup of decaf, speculate on good looking guys?
Did the passersby think I was a restaurant owner instead of there
to enjoy the colossal bags and jars Alice in Wonderland size?

​The poem “They Say” (p.75) comprises thoughtful reflection and ends with a memorable last line. (Memories of poems learned in childhood present to the reader.)
 
The poem “A Last Look” (p.52) is a perfectly composed villanelle. It places the reader in a mood at once anticipatory and nostalgic. The persona of the poem sees her image in a mirror that returns “a wavy reflection.” Her forthcoming marriage brings apprehension. But the wedding will occur at dusk and the bride has “too long tarried.” The mirror reflects to the bride her girlhood which, after a last look, we sense will soon vanish. Here is a case, as Wallace Stevens wrote, of “the pressure of reality” laying claim to a poet’s imagination. Yet Smallwood writes, not from a chaotic stance, but out of composed contemplation; this creates the space that allows the reader to share in the pre-nuptial anxiety described:

Staring hard, I said goodbye in anticipation
Longing to see what was ahead when married
I looked in a mirror with apprehension
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Another worthy villanelle, “A Mainstay” (p.49) describes how chapters in The Forsyte Saga no longer tightly entwine, the problem occurs from a “loosening of spine.” The poet writes, the “Devon Edition, pure delight, makes me pine…”
 
In Patterns: Moments in Time Smallwood displays the moments in time with an eye to Eternity. “To see days revolve into centuries (without cries of the homeless) would be good,” she writes in her final selection (p. 100). Moments (in this volume) are sometimes stunning in their simplicity. They inevitably draw the reader into a higher consciousness.
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