Some Glad Morning: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) Paperback – November 5, 2019

Some Glad Morning is a gem. Barbara Crooker’s newest book (2019) is, for me, her best among her many fine books. I found myself bending down page corners so that later I could easily locate poems I especially liked. I finally had to stop—I was bending down the corner of every page! Crooker means for us to slow down, to take close, appreciative looks around us in our one wild and precious lives, as Mary Oliver put it. “All we have are these moments,” Crooker writes: “the golden trees, / the industrious bees, the falling light. Darkness / will not overtake us.” Crooker finds meaning in what many overlook: eggplant, late September light, a dry martini. She makes her meanings with simple, luxurious language that astonishes: “yellow light of butter sinking fast on rye toast,” “Night’s vast black locomotive,” “the mockingbird letting loose his vocals, a Fort Knox of sound.” There is also a delightfully devilish playfulness that slips through now and then. In “Home Cooking” Crooker writes in the final lines, “. . . if you need to take the chill off, baby, / I might be able to dish a little something up . . . .” And for those of us who write poems, even just now and then, or induce others to write them, Crooker provides a recipe: “. . . go shopping in the grocery aisle / of your own experience.” Which strikes me as good advice for anyone learning to write. Crooker longs to be useful: “In a world that seems poised / for disaster, where what we’ve taken for granted /no longer seems given, I want to be a nail, a screw, / a brad, a fastener, something that holds things / together, even as it’s all about to fall apart.” These poems are useful. They ground you in what matters. They provide insight, pleasure, and solace against that vast black locomotive. I’ll be rereading them, bent down page corners and all.

Barbara Crooker’s latest collection, Some Glad Morning, ought to fly away (as the song says) right off the bookshelves, and fly off from here to your checkout cart. I’ve been reading Crooker’s poems for more than a decade, and the poems collected herein are among her very best. They are richly textured and dense with metaphors and other figures of speech so imagination seeps in all around the edges of keen perceptions and tightly-stitched thoughts. Any tenderhearted soul would warm to the subject matter — seasons, weathers, changing light, the flowers and fauna of the garden and those discovered further afield, meditations on works of great (and lesser) art, loss, and near-loss, and love (and cooking!) — but subject matter is foundational, and what a poet makes of the matter, is where technical mastery and genius comes into play. It is in this “making of” that Crooker exceeds. The poems are concise, precise, lucid, and luminous, and so dense, it’s almost incomprehensible: how, one asks, do you become so skilled that you can shape thoughts into such a compact ‘machine with wings’? Years and years and practice, and of thinking critically about the making, then letting that thinking shape one’s practice. In one poem, Crooker writes, “I wanted to do more in this life,/not the elusive prizes, but poems that astonish”: she’s done that in spades! Every poet eventually writes a poem of poetic election, and “Commission” is Crooker’s. In it she surmises, “I think my job is to sit here, polished/by the sun, and let the clock of the world unwind.” Yep. And thank goodness that’s what she’s granted herself the grace to do because the poems that have arisen are truly blessings.

In Some Glad Morning, poet Barbara Crooker dishes up a saucy serving of poems that remind us, again and again, of the pleasures of the flesh. From single malt scotch and beer with oysters to the velvet skin of a ripe peach in August and, above all, the delights of a dry martin, these skillfully crafted poems celebrate all that is beautiful and fleeting in our everyday lives. Crooker doesn’t hesitate to mention the horrors of war, the lies that the government speaks, or the many tragedies of our lives, but these are not her focus. Instead, she draws our attention to “a jay, a pure blue verb/landing on the feeder” or “the way a song lingers/long after the bird is gone.” These poems will linger and continue to reward repeated readings.

Reading Barbara Crooker’s poems is always a delight, a treat for the senses, and she has great ending lines. Crooker’s poems take on being against the mundane. She wants the nectar out of the simplest joys in everyday life. She also knows she can have the love of one good man, but not tango with the hard-body shirtless guy who has come to cut down her locus tree. Her poems are heartwarming, full of wit, and wisdom. She takes on the daily struggles and worldly struggles, both past and present. If you buy this book, you won’t be disappointed. Some Glad Morning is part of the Pitt Poetry Series, which is known for its quality.

In her latest collection, Barbara Crooker displays in abundance the mastery of craft and appreciation of the natural world that characterize her previous work. These poems speak of life’s pleasures and griefs in a voice at once specific and universal. Among my favorites are those inspired by food and drink (“Fifteen Been Soup, “Martini,” “Tutti-Frutti”) and by Hopper and Matisse paintings. “…our days in the sun are brief,” Crocker knows, but the knowledge doesn’t keep her from celebrating them. Rich in empathy and intelligence, Some Glad Morning is a delight to read and re-read.

Ever alert to the pleasures of nature—the flower bombs of spring, the endless repertoire of a mocking bird—in Some Glad Morning Barbara Crooker also treats us to the pleasures of hearth, body and spirit. Few poets today write as seductively about food and drink—the pleasures of the table, the comforts of sustenance. Whether interrogating a painting for an ekphrastic poem, or interrogating memory with an understanding enhanced by age and distance, Crooker peers clear-eyed through life’s darker moments and beyond them finds light. These poems reminds us to enjoy enjoy enjoy, when and while we can.