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The Path that Beckons: Poems About the Journey
by Mary Beth Bretzlauf
62 Poems ~ 10 Illustrations ~ 87 pages
Price: $15.00
Publisher: Amazon/KDF
ISBN: 9798378321957
To Order: Amazon
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
In Robert Frost’s timeless poem, “The Road Not Taken” we read these words:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth …
No doubt poet Mary Beth Bretzlauf is familiar with this poem and with the dilemma it poses. Whether this is the case or not, Bretzlauf’s debut collection, The Path that Beckons: Poems About the Journey, resonates like a well-tuned guitar. You like the notes it plays; when one tune ends you long for the next one to begin. My goal in this review is to show resemblances between Frost’s seminal poem, and Bretzlauf’s treatment of her own Path that Beckons.
Within its three-part structure consisting of “Off Course,” (21 poems), “Crossroads,” (23 poems), and “On Track,” (18 poems) Bretzlauf explores Frost’s two roads dilemma. She does so with grace and wisdom. Over time life has taught me that I have either completed a journey, am currently on one, or will shortly commence a new trek on roads that will diverge at my personal “yellow wood.”
From Off Course
Our country, and the world, got off course during Covid-19. “Hope (2020),” poignantly captures what many felt:
it burns, this need
for all to be right again–
a struck match to tinder
heat rising, rippling the air
red, orange flames
soon burning white hot
As Bretzlauf develops her journey thesis she moves readers from “an evil virus that spreads / across our world” // to a fresh vision, “even as we hope, it changes– / becoming a new life form.” Typically, the poet sees “journey” as a positive movement in life. She shifts readers “from” something “toward” something constructive and good.
In another poem, “Kite of Dreams,” Bretzlauf and her husband, having raised their biological son, take in another young man who “arrived on a strong breeze,” and through compassionate mentoring, “taught him how to do a thing or two / handed him a compass and / turned him in the right direction.”
Get it? Off Course? Let’s nudge people onto a better path.
From Crossroads
This segment highlights Frost’s line: “two roads diverged in a yellow road.”
“Cancer,” not only illustrates consequences of tobacco abuse by a family member, but also displays Bretzlauf’s writing skill. She uses original and compelling turns-of-phrase to draw readers in. The poem begins:
it is an ugly word
that comes with a long
black shadow even
Peter Pan’s Wendy cannot
rip stitches from its source
it was not unexpected after
six decades of smoking
but just the sound of the word
how it bellyflops from the tongue
in its elocution–the discord
in the symphony of sympathy [Italics by the Reviewer]
Poems with titles like “Kitchen Table Diplomacy,” “Rainbow of Black,” “View from the Train,” explore important crossroads that echo with familiar life experiences. Readers: Be sure to linger here.
From On Track
As the curtain rises on Bretzlauf’s final segment, it is as if she is just up from a good night’s sleep and feels the spirit of Frost’s third stanza:
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Indeed, both Frost and Bretzlauf know about decisions that, over time, give definition to our lives. They know that the journeys we make are quite similar yet nuanced in ways that set each person apart. Bretzlauf does not take a cookie cutter approach to poetry. This sensitivity is amply demonstrated in the poem “Who Knew?”:
how did we one day
wake deciding to be
an astronaut
brain surgeon
teacher
nurse
mother
business owner
politician
coach
ballerina
artist
writer?
Like Hansel & Gretel
we gather morsels
of interest suddenly finding
ourselves on the right path
Yes, yes, and yes again! To a collection that echoes with familiar voices that tell the truth about life:
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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