Review by Mindy Kronenberg For Saint Ann’s Review, Spring 2010

Rebecca Foust

Dark Card
Texas Review Press, 2008
Paper, 36 pages

            One of the most difficult tasks facing any poet is to write eloquently and poignantly about the vagaries and cruel circumstances life hands us without alienating a reader or dissolving into catharsis. Rebecca Foust’s Dark Card deals poems that are alternately exasperated and celebratory, detailing the challenges and triumphs of her special needs son as he comes into and makes his way through the world.

Foust’s ability for story telling makes each pained moment concrete and palpable in the context of a larger picture; she effectively condenses information with a trick of a film director’s exposition. Her indignation for the way her son is scrutinized in public for his odd behavior is beautifully realized in the eponymous opening poem, where she admonishes the ever-present, invisible jury and touts the peculiar talent that accompanies his affliction:

            Oh, He was standing on his desk again, crowing

            like a rooster in your third period-class?

            Yes, bad manners, and worse luck

            that he noticed how today’s date and the clock

            matched the hour of what you taught

            last week in a footnote—the exact pivotal

            second of the Chinese Year of the Cock

 

            We are at the beginning of a challenging journey starting with his birth—“Too Soon” brings us from a troubled labor (“My doctor looks young and afraid; / the nurse asks me if I’ve ever prayed…”) and “First Born” recreates the panic of the “…cord Gordian knotted// around your throat, the doctor’s ohfuckingshit/...it broke; your blood/ on his face, my face, the ceiling/ the back wall.”). These are frightening and momentous scenes, but their inclusion helps to foreshadow the ultimate triumphs of both author and her charge, and bring dimension to a boy who can quietly, if not strangely, immerse himself in the delicate minutiae of those things beneath the surface, as in “Underneath,” where we are told

 

            His face is blank as a kettle pond

            dawn, but he feels everything

there is underneath—

. . .

 

filaments tethering lily stars

that from above seem free to skim,

milky writhe of swimmers’ legs…

 

In “the Peripheral Becomes Crucial,” she states ‘My son is gentler with moths/ than people ever were with him, /and he chooses truth like breath.” The confounding combination of his senses brings him to set “…out cutlery backwards at the table…” and also empowers his curiosity as he “shaman-finds the bird point/ flint, the fish spine, the speckled egg.”

           The poet’s own bravery is questioned and tested as she watches herself watching his astonishing communion with the world. In “No Longer Medusa,” Foust contemplates (I would use the word “laments,” but it would be more defeatist than what she accomplishes) her transformation from rebellious soul to protective Madonna, stating “Once I turned men to adamantine/ with a glance, dove from cliffs/ into dark quarries, swung grapevines/ over ravines…Now I am alive// all night with fear for you, undone/ by your sweet milky breath,…”

Foust keeps the book’s vision from becoming claustrophobic by flipping images from metaphoric and literal interiors and exteriors, and by honoring those professionals whose kindness and wisdom allowed her son to find equilibrium in the tumult of his own imagination (“Homage to Teachers,” and “Empathy”). She conveys vision and insight, incrementally, angrily, softly, and profoundly. Dark Card’s alchemy is in its ability to reconcile with the confounding challenges of both nature and nurture.

 

Mindy Kronenberg teaches writing and literature at SUNY Empire State College. She is an award winning poet and writer, and editor of Book/Mark Quarterly Review.