There’s something in the way that Tucsonans David and Judy Ray
transmute grief into powerful art that suggests they’ve endured things
the rest of us can only suffer vicariously. Indeed, every poem in
Judy’s latest book, To Fly Without Wings, exudes the confident
aura of someone who has experienced everything life has to
offer—tragedy and comedy, darkness and light.
Like her equally adept poet husband, Judy Ray manages a difficult
balancing act between fearless autobiography and strict
formalism—like Plath and Sexton, minus the impulse toward
aesthetic extremism and personal oblivion. Wings stands as her
most consistent effort to date, and will likely cement her reputation
as a poet’s poet—a writer who makes other writers sick with
envy.
The book begins with a section devoted to Ray’s memories of her
British upbringing. In the opening poem, she returns to her birthplace
to examine the home she was raised in, the home her parents inhabited
for more than 50 years. Memories dredge themselves up; emotional
details boil over. And yet Ray presents it all matter-of-factly, like
an ice-cold prayer:
I hear echoes of children’s prattle, adolescent
awkwardness, work worry and weariness.
The seasons superimpose with summer fruit
bubbling into jam, a winter fire,
and spun-glass angels on a Christmas tree.
I see the glint of sewing needles in worn hands,
and candles moving like fireflies up the dark stairs.
This is just one stanza among the six that constitute “Returning to
Great Allfields,” but already I feel largely transported to Ray’s
childhood. And when the poet recalls other family-related
moments—like Armistice Day in the ’50s, when she and her sister
“knocked on village doors / and offered poppies / to remember the
nonsurvivors”—everything is rendered in vivid, palpable,
you’re-right-there language.
My new favorite poem is “Year One,” in which Ray recounts her and
her then-infant daughter’s international travels:
An Italian boat took us from port to port—
you ate spaghetti, slept soundly in a cot
with netting sides. We sidestepped money-changers
of Beirut, touched ancient land of Syria,
watched frozen snails being loaded in Turkey,
bound for Marseilles.
It’s rare that a contemporary poet so poignantly observes the world
around her in order to reveal her own personality and passions.
“Fearless” is the only word I can use to characterize the life Ray
expresses in her poems, and her willingness to take on any subject,
even if it cuts to the marrow.
Her poem “September” is a perfect example. Ray and her husband have
both written sadly beautiful, moving poems before about their deceased
son Sam, but this one is perhaps the most affecting. In it, the couple
dread the anniversary of his death, trying to “seal tight the September
well of darkness.” But such a well is infinite, and when Ray’s
“razoring questions” open up old wounds, the black cloud of grief
settles in once again. The way in which an owl perched in a cottonwood
tree poses his own interrogative (“Hoo”) is wrenching, especially since
it’s never really determined if the owl is mocking the couple or
sympathizing with their unanswerable inquiries. It took me a few hours
to shake off the spell of this poem.
Even when she addresses issues of which she has (I’m guessing)
little firsthand knowledge, Ray is absolutely compelling. Her Hurricane
Katrina diptych makes for powerful reading. A stanza from “No Safe
Haven” sums up the tragedy rather nicely:
We construct subways as intricate as ants’
mansions and know we can blow them up.
We destroy the Monarch butterfly’s diet
and cut down its sanctuary.
We can rain down bombs where there is no rain.
Whether composing a villanelle about seeking truth or constructing
ekphrasis on the famous composer Beethoven’s unstoppable
imagination, Ray is singularly effective, making it difficult to put
down Wings.
If you’ve ever been curious about local bards, let me urge you to
pick up this book at Antigone Books. But please don’t read Wings before sitting down to write your own poems; your mind and heart will
be reeling for a long time afterward. It’s the highest compliment I can
pay a fellow poet—to have your imagination wiped clean by the
skills of another.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.