A Slow Dance in the Flames

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Lynda Monahan’s strong first collection of poetry quite literally
represents her life, memories, people, home, weather, emotion, and
language. These elements come together cleverly, united by the recurring
image of fire. The inner flame may be subsumed by cold and pain, as it
is in “solitaire,” or it may transform over time, as it does in the
title poem “a slow dance,” from a “distant blaze” to “a
bonfire,” from “candlewick” to “matches / tossed into a wind.”
The flame expresses itself as passion, or laughter, or is expressed in
contrast to the winter cold, or in spite of pain. The people in
Monahan’s poems are flame-licked and flame-vibrant, touched by fiery
words and a passion for language. The events she remembers are
translated by flame into opportunities to create.

Prairie heat and Irish heritage burn in Monahan’s poems too, through
the family and friends that live in her words. And sometimes, the flame
is just a flame—like the fire set in cordwood that is the memory
sparking understanding in “the gift.” Occasionally, an awkward word
interrupts the flow of a poem, but overall, the reader will burn through
this promising collection.