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On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing
by Jeannie E. Roberts
43 poems ~ 86 pages
Price: $20.00
Publisher: Kelsay Books
ISBN: ISBN: 978-1-63980-686-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025932210
To Order: Kelsay Books, or Amazon. or Barnes & Noble
Or through the author for signed copies, Jeannie.roberts10@gmail.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing, Jeannie Roberts’ bold new collection, recalls two titles by two famous poets: Wallace Stevens’ “A Clear Day and No Memories,” and Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric.” Although Roberts’ collection is titled On a Clear Night, both Stevens and Roberts seek clarity and insight into the meaning of life. Admittedly, they set about doing this in diverse ways. The similarity between Whitman and Roberts lies in their explorations of the human body both in its parts and in the whole.
Roberts’ epigram prepares her audience:
I think about my body
and how on a clear night, I can hear her voice
as I rejoice in another hour, another day
another remembrance to behold
Her well-chosen saying coordinates nicely with the collection’s layout and design: I. The Animal Body (16), II. The Familial Body (15), and III. The Human Body (12). Each division contributes to the whole in its own way.
Roberts’ lead poem “Seeing Life for What It Is,” inspired me toward first steps on a meaningful journey. Her eye for elevating the ordinary is a trait I have noticed in her other works. In the instant poem, the setting is winter. A gander leads his mate between icy shapes near the shore. For most eyes, this scene is merely mundane, happening all the time, right? Not for Roberts–this pair of geese is a study in “luminosity”–this is music, this is a world of crystal and sun–a fluid essence that visualizes life itself. She is asking, “Where are we in life if we fail to sense life happening in the ordinary?
Her titles intrigue me, haunt me, compel me to read on. Roberts is a “discovery” poet. “How Can We Know a Life Unless We’ve Lived It,” personifies a lake as life-source. The lake water quivers, trembles, and flutters. Her poems are active; letters and lines launch, dance, and ripple, on and off the page. The lake’s life becomes synonymous with Roberts’ creative life.
Another absorbing title, “Inheritance and the Practice of Catch and Release,” opens Section II, The Familial Body. Joy of life is discovered when Roberts compares life experiences to things easily observed in nature: What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. I appreciated the dark humor in this poem, an apt illustration of the imagination’s range.
Various poems highlight the poet’s debt to her Swedish immigrant grandparents as well as to her parents. Poems such as “Potatoes, Prayers, and Sunfish at Dusk,” “The Distaff, the Spindle, and Cradle Full of Purkinje Fibers,” among others, describe her debt to her ancestors. She describes their craft skills, their common sense, their love for the land and the environment. These poems took my heart hostage with their homespun humanity. Roberts’ poetic range is further illustrated through traditional forms such as the Villanelle, and the Sestina. Several examples of each are sprinkled throughout the work. “When the Forced Adoption Goes Array or Does It? is a villanelle about an unsavory character who earns the telling line, Parasites flourish like wood ticks seize skin. Don’t miss this one.
“Holding Space with Bookmarks,” is a work of the heart that honors her Dad’s love of John Keats:
As my hand touched the page,
I focused on the lines. In a poetic instant there we were,
Dad and I–
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,
And eagles struggle with the buffeting north
My heart of heavy meteor-stone knew,
Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone
The Human Body, Section III, opens with a goodbye wave to winter: “You Know What to Do,” generates unfettered joy. Roberts’ poetry is instinctive about how people feel. She captures things felt, articulating what we all feel but fail to notice, much less put into words.
“Take a Seat,” offers a life-perspective introduced by a quintet from Rumi:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
–The Guest House, Rumi
Roberts’ development of Rumi’s lines is fascinating.
The spare poem “Human” for me is like a capsheaf atop a shock of wheat:
See that blade of grass
as it glows in the early light
its green tip barely visible
Do you see it?
After the glacial months
it pushes through the darkness
surrenders to emergence
and
so
can
you
I sensed layers of meaning in this poem and in poems throughout the collection. Roberts’ poetry truly sings a melody in concert with her epigram:
I think about my body
and how on a clear night, I can hear her voice
as I rejoice in another hour, another day
another remembrance to behold
On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing, is a fountain of memories full and overflowing.
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