Glimpsing Benevolence
Poems that Reverence the Ordinary
by Gloria Jean Viglione
Cover Image and Interior Images
by Jennifer Thomson
40 Poems ~ 82 pages
Price: $17.00
Publisher: The Instruments of Peace Press
ISBN #: 979-8-245-445243
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
The epigraph to Gloria Viglione’s debut collection suggests a lot about Glimpsing Bene-volence: Poems that Reverence the Ordinary. She chooses:
Above the clouds, the sky is always blue.
by St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Therese was a French Carmelite nun, known simply as the “Little Flower.” In her brief life of twenty-four years, she lived simply and joyfully performing acts of kindness without notice, credit, or fanfare. Her life portrayed the spirit of Viglione’s poems.
For this reviewer, the times we are living through cry out for a glimpse of benevolence. Our times seek a respite from caustic speech, violence, and intolerance. This collection speaks to my heart in this sense.
The collection is structured into four chapters consisting of ten poems each: “Winter Light,” “Transitions,” “Bloom,” and “Angels.” Each chapter title is also the title of a painting by Jennifer Thomson. These lovely creations, examples of a form known as “Watercolor Veil Painting,” beautifully represent the interior qualities of the work.
Winter Light, by Jennifer Thomson.
“Adagio,” is the lead poem. Adagio is a musical term describing a slow, leisurely pace to the composition. This is exactly what the poet seeks to achieve in this lovely poem about her mother. The poem is written from the perspective of a little girl observing her mother going about her day.
I glimpse my mother from the hall,
bright in early sunlight, leaning,
the round of her upper back a perfect dome
as she conducts the making of her bed.
The poet continues with details about “her Jergens-lotioned hands reaching / folding, and smoothing the lightly wrinkled / remnants of last night’s sleep, turning pages / on this, her musical score.”
Clearly, Viglione’s poetic inspiration is rooted in a relationship which anchored her life in love and in life-satisfactions derived from “Ordinary” things. “Adagio” concludes:
when I rise
in the gentle wake of her ways–
moving smooth as night clouds
crossing over the moon,
gradual as honey making its way
to the mouth of the jar,
subtle as the dissolve of a French horn
in the final nocturne’s passage.
Stylistically, the poet treats her readers to a variety of stanza presentations including couplets, tercets, quatrains, and combinations of each within the same poem. She makes unique and original usage of the em dash, italics, and wide word spacing within the same line. Viglione delighted me with skillfully contrived indentations; some I had never encountered. For a chiastic sequence, don’t miss “Glimpsing Benevolence,” on page 35.
Additionally, her titles kept me turning the page: “An Open Window,” “At the Well I Drink,” “Becoming Gold,” and “ego Inflation,” to name but a few. None of this is about showing off. Viglione is all substance. Each poem supports her premise: “Poems that Reverence the Ordinary.” This refreshing approach channels her muse, St. Therese of Lisieux.” Following are a few highlights that resonate with this reviewer.
“ego Inflation,” noted above, illustrates the poet’s personal meditative life:
when my ego is spent
on cheap exchanges,
inner double-talk
and misguided advertisements
it sometimes needs to sit
on sunny floor-spots
where the cat goes to nap
bask for a spell on smooth pine planks
and take in the warmth–
something great than itself–
and wait,
that is all,
no even knowing
that it–
is not
really me
This excerpt from “Like Praying” sets the stage for an absorbing love poem:
The way you love me is like the unraveling of pressed silk
from neatly rolled skeins, the setting free of ivory doves
through the cage’s open door–like a soft breeze
that envelops yet suspends me–like the melting
of chocolate over a slow and steady flame.
Moving into “Bloom,” the emphasis shifts to poems about flowers, plants, meadows and examples showing how Nature corresponds to human experience. I sensed summer’s aromas in “Meadow,” where:
Down a hill
past the footbridge
and old willow trunk
lies a meadow
rich in august bees
and grasshoppers
busy for the noon sun.
Growing up, I lived on a farm in Central Illinois … how sweet were those years seldom thought about until these tender ordinary lines brought my childhood roaring back to me. “On Waking from a Dream,” is a shape poem that reinforces her conviction that everything, in some sense bears a relationship to God, and all things are from God and ultimately return to God. This poem is superbly thought out and will be worth at least three readings to take it all in.
Gloria Viglione succeeded with this reviewer in showing profound “glimpses” of benevolence … it would be better or more accurate to say, she overwhelmed me with food for a banquet of spirit-filled feasting. For the modest asking price of $17.00 buy two copies and gift a friend. If you do, you will enter the poet’s “Blessing Realm”:
Some mornings
I look at my reflection
to see who I am
but today I am retracing the
becomings of the words–
forward
and
backward,
that fall from the mirror
that is my soul.
I call it the Blessing Realm–that
place that presses the fragrance
from the Source,
unedited.
This morning
I awoke
after a pre-dawn poetry episode
to find tiger lily petals
floating
in
the
fish
bowl.
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