Dancing on the Edge

by Joan Murray

In her haunting fourth collection, National Poetry Series winner Joan Murray takes the challenge of performing poetry's original and still necessary tasks in the uncertain landscape of a new millennium.

Widely praised for the exceptional humanity and technical virtuosity of her earlier collections, Murray now explores the daily struggles of life and death in the natural world, the hidden pleasures and ironies of life in small-town America, the vulnerable underside of artistic communities, and the myriad complexities that pervade our dreams and relationships in this new century. With wit, generosity, and unflinching honesty, Murray gives us poems that mourn and praise, illuminate and challenge.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2002

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murray’s poems often run two or three pages, but her strong narrative voice keeps them moving along. In fact, many of these poems seem more like flash fiction or short essays to me except for their line breaks. Her writing is often dark or wry or both – often about small events that she shows in a new light.

Two of my favorite poems are quite different in tone and effect. I’m a sucker for animal poems. In “Now We Know,” Murray first wonders why one duck didn’t fly South with the others. She goes out to rescue the duck from three boys who are throwing stones at it. They’d rather continue throwing, ‘We’re not hurting anyone,’ than feed it the bread she offers them. Then “a duckling skitters across the ice,” and the boys change their mission, trying with little success to break the ice and give mama duck space to swim and feed. The poem begins on a humorous note and ends in sadness. In “Earl Yost’s Widow,” we expect grief. Instead, she reports on the widow’s changed behavior: shopping, dining out – “(they hardly recognized her/with her lipstick and her hair curled).” You’ll need to read the punch line for yourself.

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wise and gentle collection of poems. Joan Murray heads deep into her own (presumably) life with these poems and narrates the beauty and music found in regular life--these are poems about people walking in the woods, boys watching ducks on frozen ponds, petting zoos, the complicated relationships between mother and daughter, and more. Murray becomes a very close observer of the world around her, but maintains her position as a participant, as in "Now We Know" when she heads out to convince the boys to feed the duck on the frozen pond instead of throwing rocks at it. Like confessional poetry, this collection is very close to the speaker with strong indications that the poet is speaking, but these are not poems about Murray, but about how Murray interacts with the rest of the world. A very large portion of the collection is devoted to tales of particular people and places; she tells of relatives wracked by illness, an old woman content just to have someone to talk to ("Clara Walking"), a letter to a friend whose medium is photography ("Correction"), and various pictures of her neighbors and her immediate family. Most of the poems are in smooth, elegant, free verse, like "Game Farm":

"Except," he says, "when the wind is blowing in our direction--
then at five o'clock they play the national anthem,
and a short time after--
when we're sitting down for dinner--
this roaring builds up until the lions get fed.
And sometimes in my bed, I wake up and hear--
what must be a baboon--start a low vibrating chant,
going huh-huh-huh, and then a troop joins in--
as if something's gotten loose
and is on its way over.

Every poem sings quietly and waits to be heard, and this is best in "Game Farm", "Correction", "Clara Walking", "My Mother Keeps Her Eyes", the title poem, and "Chrysalis". There is one example of heavy meter in the book, and that is another of my favorite pieces in the collection, "Song Overheard in a Field". This two-page poem takes up the entirety of the final section and is a hymn to existence, to the simple importance of being:

There goes the fiddler to the barn in the moonlight
--to stir the harvest with his strings.
Under the beams where the farmer's gone,
the dancers whirl like leaves.
They'll sing our song till the jigs are done.
Tomorrow they'll be sheaves.

[Therese L. Broderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have kept this book on my shelf since 2002. I must have read it eight years ago, but I wanted to re-read it now. The poems fare well under the test of time. Re-reading was rewarding. I admire this poet and her work. Perhaps eight years from now, in 2018, I will re-visit this fine collection.