Province of Fire

As in Food for the Winter and The Red Room, Geraldine Connolly's third volume of poetry deals with that most basic unit of society: the family. In PROVINCE OF FIRE, however, Connolly extends her vision to the broader concepts of forgiveness and redemption, not as religious experience, although both derive from it, but as earned through the artistic struggle. The poems are delicately wrought and subtle, no word wasted, with a simplicity belying depths that reveal themselves only in contemplation. The collection is an account of the journey to maturity, the struggle to break away from the twin restrictions of a Catholic childhood and the molding hand of Mother. All the poems are spoken in a single voice, but the voice changes. Section I is spoken by the petulant child, blind to everything except her own small view of life. As Frank McCourt so famously has said, "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Connolly's was a variation on this: a miserable Pittsburgh Catholic childhood. We see her struggling against her mother, against the nuns, against God himself, resisting every effort to be made into "a good flat prize of a girl." And yet, as my sainted mother used to say, suffering is good for the soul. It was good for Connolly's, at least for her poetic soul. While the child writhed under the constrictions of the mass like a "brooding land mine waiting to explode," the woman was learning "to stay silent . . . to go inward," which is the poet's discipline. While the child fumed "in a labyrinth of prayer and response," the woman was absorbing the repetitious beauty of the liturgy. So when Connolly gives us "Procession of All Souls," we hear the priest's voice chanting: "Gnarled and blessed / be the hour of autumn when / spotted pears sink / into wet sod and blessed be / the songs of virgins rising / into hunchbacked trees." Poem after poem exhibits this same lovely liturgical quality. Not just the aural sensation, but the religious words themselves take on new meaning. Thus, the child "locked in chastity's cupboard" becomes the adult who "loves the rip / of silk across skin, / the cold rush / of renunciation." Section II is spoken in a universal voice, the poet as storyteller. It tells of her family's migration to America, of their struggles, their dreams and tragedies, their stiff-necked ambitions for their children. Here is grandfather going to his labor in the coal mine:"chokedamp, stinkdamp, afterdamp-into the basket with strangers, dropping / into that other world." Here is the hope that leads him on: "as if it were the north star / rising off his sooty forehead." Judgement is withheld here. There is tenderness and understanding, humor, pity, never sentimentality. Section III deals once more with childhood but is now told in the voice of the adult looking back and is set in the perspective of the ancestry dis

Slipping between sentimentality and confession, PROVNICE OF FIRE is a painterly collection of free verse poems of a woman honestly exploring her Pittsburgh family's immigrant past and her Catholic upbringing. While the poems look back they progress from the speaker's witty teen-age rebellion ("Why I Was Sent to Boarding School") through quiet revelation ("Mother, A Young Wife Learns to Sew") to a delicate acceptance in "Painter of the Morning': But I cannot give the girl / her childhood back, nor can I invent / a magnificent ending. I can only sit here / and think and make streaks across a page, / pen strokes that are light and sure. To paint / the morning is good. It fills the hours with pleasure / as more drops fall, changing the world / in slow degree, changing. It may be that PROVINCE OF FIRE is an exciting title, but Painter of the Morning might be a more accurate title; for Geraldine Connolly has not only painted rather than burned, but also has added to our sacred space--poetry.

What a striking new book of poems "Province of Fire" is. Geraldine Connolly's voice resonates long after you've read this collection of poems on growing up Catholic, immigrant roots and finally, embracing womanhood. Her intense lyricism sings of hardship and restraint, yet the energy here burns through the surface, making these poems ones to carry with you. "Siberia" is a fabulous poem. In it she writes, "The locomotive/pulls us with its fierce body,/through fencing,/strange tongues of night/porters, morning's despairs/to begin and begin." To step into Connolly's "Province of Fire" is a multi-layered pleasure. I didn't want to leave.