Böcker av Elizabeth Raby

In A Matter of Time, Elizabeth Raby begins in the beginning with an "ever-widening circle of women" assembling fragments, gathering shards, making extraordinary music of ordinary bodies that move "past the miracle / of ever having been here at all." Never abandoning her keen eye for the personal, Raby demonstrates an uncanny ability to put the political into perspective, dancing from "skeletons / of strange creatures" that were "left / imbedded in black muck" when the sea receded 480 million years ago to black rock harvested and sliced by men with no idea "its odd gray inclusions... / had once / been living creatures." The slices become the statehouse floor, and the poet hopes "Some night / after the politicians and tourists / are gone, ...to lie down / on that glossy black, press my cheek / against the small gray life that once was." In the middle, as firmly rooted in story as in lyric, she wryly makes her hearing aids, ordinary things that remind her everything wears out, a memento mori: "The batteries sing a little song just before / they die. May I do the same." As in her previous work, she gently and joyfully reminds us that "just before we die" is the space in which we humans dwell. It is a matter of time. While "the earth might regenerate / given enough time and luck," we are bodies that move past the miracles, in one direction; and "persisting, we gather the shards." Always she finds solace in the natural world -- its complex beauties and the enigmatic lessons it provides. Any life, all life is a vanishing miracle. "But look what we have right here: / babies, birds, Bach, oceans, air-- / you'd think we'd take better care." She ends as she begins, gently jostling "the debris of the human heart," scrubbing the soft pump "with kindly fingers," reaching outward, inviting us to sing along, just before we die.

The deftly rendered poems of Raby s new collection are a powerful testament to a life fully lived (and, of course, fully living ). They are paeans to the magical people/animals/things which are integral to human fullness: to childhood memories; to the family dog, Caesar; to a father who spent more time with books and collections than his growing children; to a giving mother brave in life and death; to long deceased grandparents; to the incessant longing for children and grandchildren too far away for frequent visits; and to old poets. Raby s poetic forays into the natural world, of which there are many, are especially insightful and memorable sketches of bears, snapping turtles, hummingbirds, juncos, mourning doves, house finches, deer, squirrels, and mountain lions. Few poets writing today can match Raby in capturing, with accessible yet exquisite language, the joy, mystery, and fleeting beauty of simply being alive. The title poem of the collection, In Memoriam, aptly demonstrates Raby s mastery of poetic craft. In this poem, as in so many other poems of this collection, subject, language and earth are seamlessly fused in epiphanic utterance. The protagonist, martyred / to burnt bones, rests in her earthen grave: Her body is bronze, / her hair is moss / beneath green rain. / Cool water cascades / over her shoulders / here she is quenched liquid. / Here she is solid grace. Raby s skillful execution of the poem and seamless merging of subject, language, and earth bring to mind Seamus Heaney s Bog Queen. Raby s imagery, like Heaney s, will resonate in the reader s mind long after the book is placed back on the shelf. -Larry D. Thomas (2008 Texas Poet Laureate)"