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In Susan Kolodny's recently published collection of poems, After the Firestorm, safety, order, excitement and delight can be met with disruption, destruction, or loss. In these poems we find the inextricability of the seen and the unseen, of contentment and menace, and of wanting and not wanting to know and be known.
The 28 poems of After the Firestorm are organized into three sections. Each untitled section, to my ear, reflects a period of life from youth (I) to parenthood and clinical training (II) and finally, to the later years of living with loss and catastrophe (III). Together, the three sections trace the development of the capacity for recognizing and living with complexity. In this way, I think of the 28 poems as the arc of a lifetime, comprising a single poem.
Uninterested in being didactic or obscure, Kolodny stays away from conceptual writing — her subjects arise from her own experience. Words are carefully chosen, lines carefully constructed, yet the poems read with a sense of ease as she makes an effort to invite us in, making a place for us and our lives in her poems.
“Lagoon,” the first poem of the collection, begins with:
“In all the universe there is one sound.” (p. 5)
This language is both simple and grand. The regularity of iambic pentameter deepens our sense that we are in an ordered world. Genesis comes to mind, and, as in Genesis, this poem and others in the first section explore