Sometimes I Call Old Lovers

Bernadette Savage

Bernadette Savage has had a hard life, and most of the time, she does a decent job at capturing that life and laying it out on the page. (Compared to a book farther down in this issue, believe me, this is Nobel-winning stuff.) She does lapse now and again in to the oft- travelled poetic realms of show-don't-tell, adverbia, gerundville, and various other places that do their best to undercut the power of any given poem. There are a few places where things get prosaic, a few line breaks that make the reader wince, etc. In other words, the collection as a whole shows a poet with a deal of potential whose work is ultimately nickel-and-dimed to death by the details of the craft of poetry. It's possible, sometimes even easy, to see the possibilities in lines such as

“Last summer it was a wrecky car to sell.
A gentleman farmer from Cook finally bought it.
The condition of the car so dubious,
I left the house immediately in case he returned.”
(“What Gets Left Behind”)

Unfortunately, it is rare that said potential is realized, leaving the reader with a number of disconnected wonderful images, a great turn of phrase here and there, and a sea of “what could have been” connecting it all.