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Polite Occasions
"Polite Occasions" writes back both to Revelation and Emily Post because it imagines the future is female, that she is a lady, and if the human race Is to survive what evangelical Christians call “end times,” it will be because ladies have decided to make unladylike plans. This collection is largely set in a dystopian near-future world where political structures have become authoritarian and many feel spiritually adrift, all while most people pretend not to notice. It examines the ways in which silence renders people complicit with oppression in all its forms. It earnestly explores faith through doubt and disappointment. It might even be called a Christian poetry collection, though it is surely one that some right-wing Christians would like to burn. It is an unapologetically feminist work as well, one that understands that the oppression of women often gets enacted in the name of false gods. The poems of this collection speak their exhortations to the reader in both formal and free verse in a high vernacular that considers contemporary life in reference to much older texts. Some of the works of this collection have won prizes, and many have been published in journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. The collection stands as a warning to both the faithful and faithless that we live in an era where we might fall under an Orwellian regime infused with religious language and that democracy might fall while we take selfies.
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Published March 13, 2018
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August 16, 2019
Opening the Seals, the Anne Babson’s Polite Occasions
Anne Babson’s Polite Occasions is anything but a polite collection. It’s a journey through the strange, where “nothing compels the crashers to leave.” Made up of dialogues, lists, surreal moments in which “the Steinway may/belch out such a tone and seem to say/”Pardon me…” screen plays in which we see “The sky yawning wide and/Humming like a vacant, white screen…” on which this all is played, Babson’s poems take us on a ride.
In her well-wrought music, Babson meditates on the big questions, seeking “transubstantiation, not/Just scraps from the last meal…” Seeking the real occasion, the real revelations, particularly in the longer, challenging poem “The Unborn,” in which the “The investigation is cold cased,” but an investigation the poet continues anyway, “Leaving the pictures posted everywhere.”
The search is never over, even if “no one but/her daughter and the dog heard her.” The search through language, the search past seal after seal in which the poet tells us, “Throw no bones to divine my message….” leads us to “a vacant space,/And it does not disappoint.” Babson has filled the vacant spaces of these pages with her spiritual, intellectual journey, and as you leave the last poem and close the book, you might catch “wafted incense,/The smell of some Sufi poet’s chick peas…” and you might just understand.
Anne Babson’s Polite Occasions is anything but a polite collection. It’s a journey through the strange, where “nothing compels the crashers to leave.” Made up of dialogues, lists, surreal moments in which “the Steinway may/belch out such a tone and seem to say/”Pardon me…” screen plays in which we see “The sky yawning wide and/Humming like a vacant, white screen…” on which this all is played, Babson’s poems take us on a ride.
In her well-wrought music, Babson meditates on the big questions, seeking “transubstantiation, not/Just scraps from the last meal…” Seeking the real occasion, the real revelations, particularly in the longer, challenging poem “The Unborn,” in which the “The investigation is cold cased,” but an investigation the poet continues anyway, “Leaving the pictures posted everywhere.”
The search is never over, even if “no one but/her daughter and the dog heard her.” The search through language, the search past seal after seal in which the poet tells us, “Throw no bones to divine my message….” leads us to “a vacant space,/And it does not disappoint.” Babson has filled the vacant spaces of these pages with her spiritual, intellectual journey, and as you leave the last poem and close the book, you might catch “wafted incense,/The smell of some Sufi poet’s chick peas…” and you might just understand.
Displaying 1 of 1 review