The Breath That Lightens the Body

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.

Deirdre Dwyer has traveled the Mediterranean and Asian world. Her first
book of poems takes the reader on a journey of discovery through Japan,
Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Turkey, Greece, and Spain. Each section is
prefaced by a quotation that reveals the author’s interest in the
philosophy and culture of one of those countries. In fact, she admits to
making “a list / of the new wonders of the world, / new countries of
contentment.”

The reader has the sense of looking over the poet’s shoulder as she
records in her daily journal the descriptions, questions, and
impressions of the moment. In Japan, where she worked as an ESL teacher,
she discovers that “English is neither a revelation nor a thirst.”
We experience with her a tea ceremony, the Tsukuba planetarium, making
love in a room with “thin walls,” and a “festival of the stars.”
This is the book’s longest and most fulfilling section.

Dwyer’s poems are imagistic and haikulike. Simile and metaphor are
her favored poetic devices and she employs them with originality and
grace. Evening is “a goddess under the trees,” “brown-eyed susans
/ [are] like grounded constellations,” a cherry blossom is “like the
sky raining sake.” In Hong Kong, “sullen questions huddle” around
a woman “like tourists around the bins / in Stanley’s open-air
market.” In Thailand, the twilight breeze is “like the slow / long
seductive/ first line / that lures you.” In India, the Gurudwara is
“boarded up,/ like a book,/ we close,/ when life at random breaks
in.”

Letters are a unifying device, operating as reminders to the poet that
she is only temporarily in this unfamiliar environment. In “Letter to
Elissa,” she notes: “Sometimes I think I travel / only to come
home.” Ultimately, she comes to appreciate that the road walks with
her and that she “become[s] whatever [she] travels.”