Refuge

by Belle Waring

Waring's poems forcibly avoid the workshop warp. From the opening, her language lashes. . . . Anyone would be convinced of both her originality and her toughness. . . . Waring uses tactics that women singers have known about for a long time: the balm of the work song and the empowering sounds a brassy belter makes as she sings of a tough life that earns her a living."--Voice Literary Supplement

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1990

Reviews

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Belle Waring's book "Dark Blonde" is one of my favorite books, so I was excited to read this earlier book; it was chosen by Alice Fulton as the winner of the Association Writing Programs' Award Series in Poetry. Belle Waring is a powerful writer and these are strong poems. Here she has created a character, Breeze, and there are poems throughout the book about her. The poems I like the best are about her work, she is a nurse work gets the work and the position of nurses in relationship to power dynamics in a hospital setting.

Here is my favorite poem:

Baby Random

tries a nosedive, kamikaze,
when the intern flings open the isolette.

The kid almost hits the floor. I can see the headline:
DOC DUMPS AIDS TOT. Nice save, nurse,

Why thanks. Young physician: "We have to change
his tube." His voice trembles, six weeks

out of school. I tell him: "Keep it to a handshake,
you’ll be OK." Our team resuscitated

this Baby Random, birth weight
one pound, eyelids still fused. Mother’s

a junkie with HIV. Never named him.
Where I work we bring back terminal preemies,

No Fetus Can Beat Us. That’s our motto. I have
a friend who was thrown into prison. Where do birds

go when they die? Neruda wanted to know. Crows
eat them. Bird heaven? Imagine the racket.

When Random cries, petit fish on shore, nothing
squeaks past the tube down his pipe. His ventilator’s

a high-tech bellows that kicks in & out. Not
up to the nurses. Quiet: a pigeon’s outside,

color of graham crackers, throat oil on a wet street,
wings spattered white, perched out of the rain.

I have friends who were thrown into prison, Latin
American. Tortured. Exiled. Some people have

courage. Some people have heart. Corazon.
After a shift like tonight, I have the usual

bad dreams. Some days I avoid my reflection in store
windows. I just don’t want anyone to look at me.

[Antonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart and sassy, some would say brassy. Tough and hip. The word metallic did come to mind. These poems have hard edges. They're bright and shiny, can withstand the elements. A unique voice, consistent throughout the volume and very different from the poetry I've been reading lately. Maybe that's what the Voice Literary Supplement reviewer means by saying that the poems "forcibly avoid the workshop warp." Some difficult subjects are covered here. The speaker has been sexually molested by her father. (The poem, "Daddy Spit Daddy Coo" is chilling). Now an adult, she is a nurse perhaps working in an infant ICU (Their slogan: "No fetus can defeat us.").

Some of the poems have what Publishers Weekly calls "a slangy, deadpan quality, giving the poet's perceptions of the pain of emotional loss a humorously hopeful slant." I'm sure I couldn't have said that better. A reviewer at Amazon.com likens her to jazz singer Rickie Lee Jones. Yes, yes, yes! Wish I'd thought of that.

One of the poems from this collection, "Our Lady Of The Laundromat," is at The American Poetry Review, Volume 19, No. 4.

Five more of her poems are online at Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Two of these, "Saudade" and "Roman du Poisson," one of my favorites, are from Refuge.

ROMAN DU POISSON

So they catch me--who cares? You should see
her eyes when I slap fat salmon on the scale and price it
Catfish. So she likes me, who wouldn't--but hey,
I'm not tall enough for her, and B: I'm hefty.

But I can be subtle. Once I saw her on the bus,
my heart jumped like a trout. I jumped up to give her

my seat--this wino took it and passed out. I don't know
her name, like some dream where you try to yell Portia!

Katherine! Miranda! Take my seat, all warmed up!
But the bus was packed with dirtballs who shoved

her in the aisles. She never saw me. She's not pretty,
really, but she slays you with those black

eyes. Man overboard. Like you have to see her when she comes
to the shop, tired, alone, ordering one lousy catfish,
lugging so many books she can't find
her change. And how her face changes when she sees

Hello. It's me.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, really great. Arguably better than her excellent Dark Blonde, because the tone of these poems is more consistent and appropriate to their subject matter. Waring has that essential poet's ear, an understanding of the rhythms of spoken language that make the dialogue in these pieces real and believable.

Also, despite a rather undeserved reputation for being sort of low rent, and prefering the vernacular and the every day to the academic or theoretical, I learned no fewer than four new vocabulary words while reading Refuge--colloid, manganese, pullet and pylon, if you must know. I love poems that make me run for the dictionary.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

See review for Dark Blonde. This is her earlier work.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took an unforgettable class with Belle Waring while I was a student at Pitt. The poems are every bit as memorable as she is.

[jovan]

very intact stories. some very lovely turns of phrase but the endings of poems were often a bit blunt and belabored for my taste

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Waring's poetry is gritty. She's not afraid to write about uncomfortable subjects.