Belonging

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

A highlight of Sandy Shreve’s third book is the heroic epic
“Emma’s Wardrobe,” a tale about Sarah Emma Evelyn Edmonds, a New
Brunswick woman who adopted a male identity and spied for the Union Army
during the Civil War. Although our minimalist age has devalued the
concept of heroism, this poem is not without its contemporary
attractions: a woman who participates in the Civil War is the ideal
feminist role model, while a girl who flees an arranged marriage to an
older man who is “worse than foul” is the perfect Victorian heroine.


Shreve also explores her own family history. “Heartbeat” is a
tribute to her father Jack, who died when she was 14. After his death,
she prints “information onto death certificates / at the desk where
you used to talk to the world ... in the ham’s common code.” In
“Between Sisters,” a tribute to her sister Carolyn who had cerebral
palsy, the poet eloquently describes the realities of life with a
handicapped child. On the one hand, she must mediate between her sister
and callous peers. On the other hand, her mother views her as equally
insensitive because she referred to an unpopular male classmate as a
“spaz.”

Sandy Shreve’s humane and perceptive verse proves that narrative
poetry can still appeal to contemporary readers.