God on His Haunches

Beryl Baigent is a poet; her published collections include Absorbing the
Dark, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins, Triptych: Virgins, Victims,
Votives, and Mystic Animals.

The favored poetic device in Diane Tucker’s first collection is the
simile. Many of these are strong and striking: a voice is as “heavy as
a crossbow,” a smile is “[l]ike the raising of a curtain,” and the
lips of the poet’s lover “curl back like singed hair.” Others give
a contemporary edge to the poetry: night is fluid and energizing “like
black gatorade,” and a pregnant stomach is likened to “a mandala,
symmetrical / a map of the months.”

Tucker is adept at providing portraits of the people in her life.
Readers come to know her biological father (“a breath stirring at the
edge of the playground”), her fellow poets (“Little Mags”), and
her infant daughter (“Beth’s Dream” and “Summer Evening”). Her
portrait of “Louise, lost to Alzheimer’s” is one of the most
heartfelt poems in the collection.

Tucker’s love poems offer sensuality and natural metaphors. Her
lover, “the mountaineer,” is invited “to test the cavern / for the
quality of its echo.” “Memory, like coffee on the tongue /
ambushes” this poet, who knows “the stripped relief— / the beauty
of the bare brown branch” as she discloses her deepest self in
personal and lyrical poems.

The title poem complements Kim LaFave’s eye-catching cover design. As
he carries out his time-lapse photography, male yet also helpless, the
young “God on his haunches” presents a “terrifying picture.”
Like the poet, he is “waiting for the crunch” and savoring time.