Subterranean

In the opening poem of this collection, Bialosky writes, "All I know is that she could not take it anymore/lying day after day underneath the hollow tree, waiting...wondering if there is a type of love/that saves us or whether there was more/to the world than the familiar paradise/of her mother's complicated and vivid garden." The poems that follow evoke, in Bialosky's frank, wistful style, the forms of love a woman indeed discovers outside that sheltering garden. She writes of the...
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In the opening poem of this collection, Bialosky writes, "All I know is that she could not take it anymore/lying day after day underneath the hollow tree, waiting...wondering if there is a type of love/that saves us or whether there was more/to the world than the familiar paradise/of her mother's complicated and vivid garden." The poems that follow evoke, in Bialosky's frank, wistful style, the forms of love a woman indeed discovers outside that sheltering garden. She writes of the loss of one child and the birth of another; the passions of her previous life; the seductions of suicide and the comforts of art.Woven throughout these poems are references to the story of Persephone and Demeter, and the speaker identifies with both -- Demeter as she grieves for her lost daughter; and Persephone, who dares to leave her mother for darker temptations. Bialosky manages, in this alluring book, to find a strange beauty in grief, and to emerge from those temptations significantly wiser.