Lunatic's Well

Sheila Martindale is poetry editor of Canadian Author and Bookman and
author of No Greater Love, her sixth collection of poetry.

In these remarkable poems Joyce travels into her childhood and uncovers
a variety of memories. There is a dreamlike quality to these
recollections: characters loom and fade; feelings of apprehension,
exasperation, and fear weave in and out. We experience some incidents
with the child, and look at others through the eyes of an adult.

The poet’s grandfather peels an orange “to show her / what’s
inside is sweet and full of juice / until the acid hits her eyes.”
This juxtaposition of nurture and sting is a constant image in the book.

Going back physically and metaphorically to the people and places where
she grew up is at once pleasant and uncomfortable; this dichotomy keeps
the reader on the knife-edge of interest. Ambivalent feelings about
one’s past and one’s relatives are universal, and Joyce has the
unerring knack of lightly touching the emotional buttons so that one
says, “Yes, of course, that’s exactly how I felt!”

And yet there are many layers here. One comes away from the poems
knowing that each time they are read another meaning will be found or
another mystery will unfold. The more one tries to put one’s finger on
the nub of a poem, the farther it recedes, so that we are drawn into the
dream like Alice following the White Rabbit into Wonderland. It is a
disturbing journey, but a fascinating one.