Concrete and abstract meld to create a resonance rooted in the sparse toughness of language. The litany here is not only dependent on the words but also on white space. The juxtapositions parallel the turmoil of mid-life, but they also resonate with an inner intuition that dictates the wildly juxtaposed answers as in the “Worrier” poem subtitled “the body.” The two voices remain true to themselves, never bordering on the sentimental, never hesitating, but rather speaking with a clarity based on experience. The question/answer format revolves around fear, relationships, and nature’s fragility. In the section entitled “The Worrier,” her voice takes on the previously promised maturity of wisdom from the “bicycle voice.” Each poem in this section is structured as a dialogue between two inner voices that create a philosophical template based on our human capacity for worry. Lipped over undercoats of lime, violet, battleship Orange a true orange into fluorescent-orange into red, Now I know I need the sudden turquoise car Her ekphrastic response to a painting by David Dornan in the poem “‘Process’ at the Balance Rock Café” highlights her ability to process color and texture through language: Patina sheens to indigo, sapphire, a swarm of blues Īs if her notebook were a canvas, she sketches images through idiolect and responds to other artists’ paintings as well, infusing the page with a rich verbal palette. Takacs is also a water color artist, and her intimate knowledge of hues, tones and textures is evident in her images of desert landscape infused with light as in the poem “Balance Rock, October”: Her sensitivity to inner landscape likewise flourishes as in the poem “Escalante” where she invites the reader to discover “ghost-shaped / petroglyphs in the dark blue patina.” Seamless language appears to grow effortlessly from the sandy soil, rugged canyons, and juniper-laden ridges where “the exotic is nature.” Takacs luxuriates in images of flora, fauna, and weather that compose wilderness and shares this adventure of spirit in her “jeep / clawing its way over slick rock.” She writes of avalanches and quicksand, arches and petroglyphs, flash floods and crabapples in her desert yard. From her experience as a Wilderness Studies Guide, landscapes surface-mountains, deserts, rivers, and slick rock. The poems in the section “Utah Map” use nature as a catalyst for rediscovery, opening into a life much different than her childhood in New Jersey. Her subject matter is unflinching and grasps the core of what it is to be human, to transcend our surroundings and make sense of the world we inhabit. From the poem, “Sunday, My Brother,” we hear an example of Takacs’ haunting voice: This first section reaches back to a time of I Love Lucy, garter belts, and childhood secrets, defined by Takacs in her poem “Hurt” as a time when “writing was penmanship, / and we were in love with letters / as if they were tears, and we were / the ones who had cried them.” These poems lend a renewed perspective to growing up-Sunday Mass followed by donuts from the deli, a stolen kiss, and intimate relationships that form family-the brother’s distance, the father and his buddies at Campbell’s Tavern, and the mother’s voice of prayers and songs. The determination and grit that drives these poems is expressed further in the poem: This poem serves as an introduction to the collection as a whole. Takacs immediately focuses on the act of writing, the physical activity of the wrist, the ability to go beyond the self, drawing on nature and its images, to become lost in the centering-an intuition that gyrates with wisdom. In the April wind, flies low to the apple trees Her opening poem of the same title begins with a lyrical description of voice which serves as a springboard for the poems that follow: In the opening section, “The Voices,” Takacs journeys back through her childhood in the cityscape of Bayonne, NJ. Each of the four sections has its unique theme, but the unifying threads are in Nancy Takacs’ attention to voice and imagery, her relationship to the natural world, and her intuitive perception. The poems in Blue Patina weave through varied subject matter, some relating to childhood, others to wilderness, and still others to the concept of worry.
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