When I read fiction, there is a pleasure in traveling through an author’s character development, a new plot twist, and that authentic boom of good storytelling. However, when I read poetry, it’s an investment in learning about my emotions. Poetry puts me at the edge of life, moves me in ways no other pedantic pursuit could.
Through poetry, I always discover words and phrases that warm my heart – words that I want to repeat, mostly to those I cherish. It is poetry that allows me to embrace tenderness in this place, where it is sometimes so hard to find.
When I got my hands on Threshold, a collection of poems by Jennifer Richter (2010), I went through it with the same questions I always ask of anthologies: What is the theme and why?
Richter’s struggle with life and death, while being a mother and wife, made recovery a reoccurring theme in the anthology. That it took six sections to complete Threshold may not be incidental, as the seventh day is needed for recovery.
“To me, the Recovery poems are the real backbone of the book,” Richter said in an interview. “The manuscript didn’t feel grounded enough, whole enough, till I realized that each section needed to end with a Recovery poem.”
Recovery to Richter means more than simply getting back to a natural state.
Through Richter’s poetry, readers are able to grasp her perspective of what it means to endure. She is serious about life and the challenges that rise up against it.
Readers learn they must invest themselves in order to understand the rehabilitative value of projecting the emotional roller-coaster of fighting for one’s life. It is a fight that is deeply personal for Richter and that has made Recovery a poetic reality in her own life — seen in her struggle to overcome cancer and recover from chemotherapy.
Recovery 3 made me appreciate Richter’s bravery and strength.
It forced me to consider Threshold in unexpected, ways: Now you can’t break down…People are waiting for you. Lingering on Recovery 3’s purposely placed line breaks draws readers into Richter’s sensations and intense stoicism.
Nevertheless, even in Richter’s stiff recovery, she recognizes at the last minute what you can’t part with and rushing to it, out there. Her lyric poetry defines its own beauty by valuing family above all, which makes hearing, you’ll be fine, seem comforting in spite of the pain.
The insight contained in The Last Word shows Richter’s ability to understand that faith is the guiding force behind a full recovery.
Spring, and It Starts to Snow: is a moment in time when you think that you’re a life giver, but reality snaps you back to the here and now, and It’s hard sometimes, to live.
What Is My Body Without You: This poem gives readers the sense of what childbearing is like, emotionally. Richter guides us through her entire pregnancy—leading up to that moment in time when she watches her child leave her body to be in this world — an awesome moment.
I come away from Threshold with a sense of intimately knowing Richter’s mindset as a mother and wife conflicting with all the struggles that a life-threatening illness brings — which made me understand, in a deeper sense, what it truly means to recover.
Juan’s Book Review