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From this Side of the Picture Window
Poetry by Patricia E. DeJong
40 Poems ~ 76 pages
Price: $15.00
Publisher: Praying Mantis Press
ISBN #: 9798884563629
To Order: Amazon
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
Among the more memorable clichés of my childhood was the oft quoted:
impression without expression = depression.
These words (which I now realize to be true) returned to me when I noticed that Elaine Dejong’s, From this side of the Picture Window, is divided into two sections entitled respectively, “Expressions,” and “Impressions.”
Twenty-five poems comprise section 1, “Expressions.” Noting the book’s cover image: the poet is “this” side of the window. This artistic device serves Dejong well because she can create, as she pleases, the world in which she dwells. Intuition suggests to me that poetry is Dejong’s companion in life, an indispensable partner that nourishes the deepest recesses of her spirit.
The poem “Internal Space,” expresses, for this reviewer, support for my intuitive note above:
That internal space
Reaped with a scorching sickle
You’re still in here
As starlight in Vantablack
A silent shine in stark darkness
It’s how I close my eyes
How I open them
How I inhale and exhale
The poem continues to develop the poet’s irrepressible loss of one she loves. Vantablack, is a super-dense black, used here as metaphor. She laments, “And my love for you / Is matched only by grief.” This is a poet who feels deeply but who finds solace in that which poetry offers.
Poetry is Dejong’s path to self-realization, as in these lines from “I didn’t come to be with ease”:
I wanted to be
a pale number two pencil
with a pink conical eraser
but instead, I am a fountain pen
This poem provides a brief bio-sketch of the poet herself. With deceptively simple language and adroit use of metaphor, Dejong chronicles the difference between being a “pale number two pencil,” and a writer worthy to be reckoned with.
In the poignant, “The Beauty of Hello,” Dejong plumbs “Hello” to its depths: “It is an introduction to a new season,” “Its movement stirs the soul awake.” She counsels:
Be beautiful, be sincere
Be the breeze of a new season
And let it fill my nostrils one last time
Then smile for me
My soul is being stirred awake
Section 2, “Impressions” is introduced with a quote by Albert Einstein:
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
As with the childhood cliché noted at the beginning, Einstein’s aphorism rings home with the same powerful truth. Here, I sense a change in tone in Dejong’s work. Whereas, in Section 1, she gives free reign to “expressing” those things, people, and experiences which form the terrain of her life, I now sense something more settled, more speculative. In “Whirlwinds of Sand,” Dejong’s speculative penchant waxes eloquently:
what must we look like
to God?
I imagine
like grains of sand
blowing around in the wind
as we spin in misdirection
from our dizzying decisions
rising like sandcastles and
deconstructed by the
waves of our consequences
Dejong’s mind is a virtual “whirlwind” of ideas about God, about life, and about what God may or may not think when his gaze finds us. In any case, it is only the healthiest of people who can think critically about the Deity. I found her musings well worth the effort.
The poet’s titles draw me in. “The Park” (though simple as title) paints a stark winter picture in which even the geese and ducks have moved on because there is nothing left for them. Her description paints an arresting picture of life that involves the poet’s past:
no one comes here, except at night,
but for the addicts and the whores
and for today only, a pensive poet
missing a childhood oasis
Note that the poet is merely visiting the pond; she does not steep herself in the park’s despair. Like Einstein, Dejong knows she must break free of cumbersome thinking; she knows when it is time to move on.
From this Side of the Picture Window, is a thoughtful, plain-spoken collection which has spoken to this reviewer’s heart and revealed a fresh view of life, on my side of the picture window.
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