{"id":36204,"date":"2017-01-29T20:24:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T02:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36204"},"modified":"2018-09-08T20:25:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T02:25:36","slug":"miraculous-knots-nancy-takacs-new-volume-of-poetry-is-full-of-startling-imagery-and-delicate-revelations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/miraculous-knots-nancy-takacs-new-volume-of-poetry-is-full-of-startling-imagery-and-delicate-revelations\/","title":{"rendered":"Miraculous Knots: Nancy Takacs\u2019 new volume of poetry is full of startling imagery and delicate revelations"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Richard Hedderman<\/span><\/p>\n

If for a moment you imagine language as a length of rope, a poem forms when you start tying knots in the rope and pulling them tight, snugging them and squeezing all the air out. The poet may then submit to the reader that his imagination run over the knots like fingers over a set of prayer beads. I don\u2019t know if Nancy Takacs knows this, but she knows this. And her new volume of poetry,\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>, is an astonishing collection studded with miraculous knots of imagery and revelation as startling and delicate as bird tracks in the snow.<\/p>\n

Each poem in the book is titled \u201cThe Worrier,\u201d with a subtitle appended that carefully focuses it. The poems are arranged in a question\/answer pattern in which an unidentified speaker questions the poet, who responds in her own voice:<\/p>\n

The Worrier\u2014scars<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

What is that scar on your thumb?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a gray desert road, with small tracks.<\/p>\n

How is it wandering?<\/em><\/p>\n

It goes far into a valley with pink mountains.<\/p>\n

Who lives there?<\/em><\/p>\n

The snake who is always eros.
\nThe lizard who flexes
\nin my shadow.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Very quickly, I suspect, readers of\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>\u00a0will identify this structure as catechism, a call and response learning ritual, an ancient model of teaching through rhythm and the emphatic declaration of belief.<\/p>\n

We are likely to imagine at first glance that the title refers to worry in the quotidian sense: anxiety, perseverance over looming problems or pending catastrophe. On one level, the structure of the book replicates worry itself; the repeated title is a loop the mind follows as it worries, flowing from internal to personal, to external, global and existential. But we quickly understand that a subtler reading is demanded.<\/p>\n

The poet has invited us to observe as she parses the many questions posed here, combing through them in order to unravel\u2014to\u00a0try\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0worry\u00a0<\/em>out of them\u2014a central comprehension: What is it that makes\u2014and keeps\u2014us alive? According to one reading of the poems in\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>, one answer is resilience in the face of human mystery, from which emerges an unending challenge to what we take as truth.<\/p>\n

And Takacs is in unrelenting pursuit of the answers\u2014reworking, re-asking, reconsidering and demanding the reader\u2019s unyielding attention. She\u2019s asking each of us to join her in pulling apart our collective mortal experience, strand by strand, in order to understand what is at its heart.<\/p>\n

And the indomitable voice we follow throughout these poems resonates with a visionary, hypnotic and absorbing force, as in \u201cThe Worrier\u2014skin\u201d:<\/p>\n

What lives on the skin?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A mirror and a cloud of tumbleweed.<\/p>\n

Why a mirror?<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the way he can touch me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And in a later stanza:<\/p>\n

Where does the skin end?<\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In a brazen
\nconstellation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here is a central device of the poems in\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>: a dramatic shift in scale. The finite boundaries of the skin yielding to the imponderable breadth of a star cluster deep in the galaxy. And when we arrive, what is there? More questions, to be sure, but always an array of arresting responses.<\/p>\n

Here, too, is an imperishable voice, running like a harmonic thread through the incantatory landscape of these poems. Takacs successfully labors to get at our urgent, implacable impulse to dig beneath the surface\u2014any surface that might conceal an answer that will assuage our wonder.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Worrier\u2014old woman,\u201d we witness the parallel of an aging woman and an elm, a majestic but dying species. The poem urges the reader to think about love as something fierce and mad but healing:<\/p>\n

She was crazy. She
\nwould circle the block
\nwhile I was playing with friends
\nor riding my bike.<\/span><\/p>\n

What did she do?<\/em><\/p>\n

She turned and turned to look at me.<\/p>\n

Why did she do this?<\/p>\n

She loved me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is ritual dialogue that transcends skin, bone and brain, leaving the reader with a query of his own. From where do the questions emerge? Are these questions she is asking herself, or is a numinous, secondary voice probing her understanding, involving us in her explorations of a universal self? The answers challenge the questions, and the reader is urged to decide just how welcome these demanding and unforgiving voices truly are.<\/p>\n

Takacs has a deeply feminine and generative voice\u2014forceful and clear, registering internal and minute detail and connecting herself and her readers with the natural world against which we examine ourselves.<\/p>\n

Although the volume and its individual poems are all titled, \u201cThe Worrier,\u201d they reveal, in fact, a deeply affirming voice. Takacs is recording the impermanence of a life that is, nonetheless, one dimension of an inexorable, restorative cycle, grounded in our communal struggle with haunting, existential loss.<\/p>\n

Though the questions tear continually at our human longing for recognition, Takacs\u2014as well as her poems\u2014has a spine, and she stands fast in the face of our collective global terror. Such is the case in \u201cThe Worrier\u2014volunteer,\u201d where her responses are distinguished by an unwavering declarative:<\/p>\n

\n

What will you do?<\/em><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t turn away
\nfrom the dead whose
\narms lie above their heads
\nas if still in sleep.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t turn away
\nfrom the living,
\ntheir bodies maimed,
\nthe skin shining
\nover hollow places.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Again, the questions are relentless, but the poet isn\u2019t interested in relenting, and nothing is going to shove her off the mark until this business is settled.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>, Takacs uses color in near volumes to evoke layer upon layer of cognitive artifact. For her, colors are indispensible totems of comprehension, and in nearly every poem the vocabulary evokes them in startling visual events as in \u201cThe Worrier\u2014sculptor\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

Cinnamon clay,
\nWestern light suggesting
\nViolet-green under an eye,
\nRose in a dimple,
\nIndigo behind an ear<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Black or turquoise, purple or red, emerald, rose, mango, cerulean, ivory, madder and cobalt green. Takacs\u2019s palette is thick with breathtaking, shimmering hues offered as a way to number and illuminate the many surfaces of the sensory experience by which we continue to shape our identity.<\/p>\n

Takacs tells us that color is form, and form is cognition. Here\u2019s the poet in \u201cThe Worrier\u2014watercolors\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

What will you use for the fenceline<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll paint the gate Mars Violet.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll paint the gate open.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So now we see, as well, that colors open doors. For Takacs, as well as for all of us, she would suggest, perception is power.<\/p>\n

Among the poet\u2019s dizzying vocabulary are multiple references to gemstones evoking the immense, inexorable force of gravity on minerals that turns them into gems. There\u2019s a persistent sense of the ancient heart of the earth, of geological and psychic bedrock. There are references to silver, copper, iron, gold: metals forged, like human endeavor, through the immense weight of time and submitted to flame, crafting something obdurate, imperative:<\/p>\n

\n

The Worrier\u2014husband<\/em><\/p>\n

What was his father like?<\/em><\/p>\n

He was quiet,
\ncut fire opals
\nin his lapidary.<\/p>\n

He set a moonstone
\nfor his wife.<\/p>\n

I saw the copper
\ncuffs he wove
\nfor his children.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All of Takacs\u2019s evocation of stone, gems, minerals, fossils remind us that consciousness\u2014both human and non-human\u2014is an antediluvian dynamic impossible to vanquish. It is inside everything we do, utter and imagine, and it determines who we are. Here\u2019s Takacs in \u201cThe Worrier\u2014failure\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

Where did it begin?<\/em><\/p>\n

Millions of years ago.
\nThe pastel sweep of earth,
\nan anticline
\nthat used to be a sea.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The poem continues:<\/p>\n

\n

Where are you?<\/em><\/p>\n

A thousand feet up
\non a ledge
\nwithout a guardrail.<\/p>\n

Near caldera explosions,
\ndomes capping sediment,
\nlavender figures,
\na veil of stones.<\/p>\n

In the sea\u2019s
\nbathtub rings where
\nI can still feel the ripples.<\/p>\n

Where does failure come from?<\/em><\/p>\n

Trilobites, corals,
\ndinosaur footprints,
\nice-aged mammoths.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even failure\u2014tragic, implacable, torturous\u2014nonetheless is a power to be welcomed as an ultimately nurturing and determinative force. This is a chief declaration in\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>: failure is just another dimension of making.<\/p>\n

Time and the universe will finally hack us down and unmake everything we\u2019ve done and known, but it changes nothing; the human imperative\u2014faulty, strident, impatient, bewildered\u2014is of the Earth, and the Earth, as seen so often in these poems, can be nonetheless immeasurably generous and enduring.<\/p>\n

Takacs\u2019s language is elegiac but affirming:<\/p>\n

\n

The Worrier\u2014freesia<\/em><\/p>\n

To be curious,
\nsilent. I want to open.
\nI want to be red
\nbut hidden.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In\u00a0The Worrier<\/em>, Nancy Takacs has said everything that needs saying about the body\u2019s infinite relationship to its owner, and our inseparable communion with the natural world that contains, embraces and labors, ultimately, to undo it. This is the essential mortal battle, the\u00a0worrying<\/em>\u00a0of the human corpus into its multiple strands of meaning.<\/p>\n

Takacs has given us a guide to our place in a deeply luminous world, and its implications for infinite relationship and comprehension.<\/p>\n

Finally, the reader is left to wonder: who, exactly, is asking the questions? Answer: we are. Through the poems in this remarkable collection, Nancy Takacs has given us all a voice.<\/p>\n

The Worrier<\/em>
\nNancy Takacs
\nUniversity of Massachusetts Press<\/a>
\nJanuary, 2017
\n96 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Richard Hedderman If for a moment you imagine language as a length of rope, a poem forms when you start tying knots in the rope and pulling them tight, snugging them and squeezing all the air out. The poet may then submit to the reader that his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2589,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 13:16:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36206,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204\/revisions\/36206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}