Temporary Shelter

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.

One route into Lane’s world of lyrical feminist poems is by
considering the dichotomy she creates between two aspects of “time,”
and the “elastic space” that “expands between [these]
solitudes.”

Greek philosophy proposes two kinds of time. Kronos is chronological,
linear, and measured—the kind of time that Lane attempts to keep out
of her “ordering.” Kairos is the kind of time one participates in by
being totally involved and by losing oneself to the moment. Lane sets up
this dichotomy in “Hills.” But in “Old Sow” she also reminds us
that “It’s not two minds I have but several.” In “No The About
Him” she is ever conscious of the workings between left and right
brain hemispheres and the many permutations that can be concocted
“unique each time.”

Although many of Lane’s poems are seemingly imagistic and therefore
accessible at the level of the immediate images, there is always more
ticking between the two poles of enclosed time and open time. This
collection is therefore not an easy read but certainly a worthwhile one.
Like the cat in “A long way through the chairs” Lane takes the long
way around—purely for sensual pleasure.