Acetylene Paperback – February 1, 2010

The cover of this book of poems captures its spirit for me: Out of a depth of darkness, a light arises. A thin ray of life gathers force and pushes upwards towards the surface like the sun breaking out of the horizon into an empty sky. Acetylene is about the darkness, and it is also about the light that shines in the dark night of the soul. It is about surviving a traumatic event and creating one's own light when nothing else is there to save us.Many of the poems in this poem refer to historic events and personages. It is helpful to look up these references to understand these poems. In "Dark Secret Love," an inventor goes underwater to test the submarine that he created. He holds his breath and discovers "what one is capable of." This poem foreshadows the book as it describes a person going underwater, coming up against a barrier and finding that he has the inner resources to push through. Continuing the underwater theme, "Deep Sea Dantesca" explores a fantasy of people living under water their entire lives. They don't want to come up for light: "They'd tell you that they're safer where they are. They'd talk about the fickleness of the skies." Sometimes it feels safer to remain in darkness because the work of discovering the light can be blinding and painful. This seems very reminiscent to me of leaving the Mormon church, which, as a friend of the poet, we both have experienced.The turning point of the book is "Hour of Birds" which expresses something similar to Emily Dickinson's "After great pain a formal feeling comes." The speaker says, "I am the same, though everything has changed," "This sentience is only insomnia, my body is mute in reply." This is the bottom of the depth. After a great loss or traumatic event one's entire being is numb before the pain hits. The white space on the page evokes the desolation, emptiness, and loss. This poem enacts the lowest point before the self comes to its own rescue when the body and mind are simply silent.The rest of the poems explore various forms of survival, acceptance, and redemption. In "Motorhome Agon," a daughter imagines what it would be like if her mother had the strength to break free from an abusive relationship, like a newborn "with its own strength, filling its lungs with sharp oxidizing air." "Old Mattresses" imagines a life for old furniture that has been abandoned, the coils "writhing in their own dream of flight" even as they are disintegrating and eaten by worms. The very beautiful "Soliloquies at the Outer Banks" tells the story of the lost colony of Roanoke from the point of view of its inhabitants. The four part poem enacts a journey of loss. A daughter waiting for a sail to return, the abandonment of the colony, a father "giving up the search too soon." The lover holds on during hardship. The poem quietly moves towards redemption without resolution. The colony is never found and loved ones are never reunited. But "let this story's ending go untold," says the speaker, "The sand subdues. Let me go my love, and grow forgetful. The sand reminds me of you. I do not fear its pale of wrists and lips, its whispered prayer." The lover lets go and is unafraid to cut ties. Absence is no longer a cause for fear, and even though "the present has no maps", "new forms appear....gallop from the present's gray collapse." In these historical poems the poem begins with a specific reference but becomes ambiguous as to whether the speaker is talking about herself or her historic subject.Loss has no resolution and moving on is not easy, but acknowledging it is a way for us to move on. In "Waking in Winter," the speaker talks about climbing out of a great depth from the Mariana trench, "the way that one might leave the wreckage of one's loss." But the world still continues, like the cardinal the speaker sees out the window, the moon "still familiar." In "Blossoming Almond Tree", Van Gogh's almond blossoms are actually in winter. Instead of waiting for Spring, the artist improvises. "There are risks in waiting for resurrection," he says. The speaker in "Spinning Wheel" affirms the subject's ability to change circumstance like the metal worker who cuts through metal with acetylene, the fire "releases what is already within," "what IS could be undone." Acceptance of loss is not a passive act. The poem affirms that we already have what we need to survive.The last two poems describe what happens after one has moved on. "November Aubade" expresses that even when one has moved on the memory doesn't entirely fade, one still hears the voice of someone one loves in the early light of day. Finally, in "Losing Contact," the speaker compares living after loss like a musician playing music that nobody is listening to, but he plays on anyway because the world goes on and he goes on.Acetylene is a book that inspires. It reminds us of the spiritual resources waiting to be unlocked, that we can survive almost any traumatic event. Acetylene is a journey through loss and the way the human spirit prevails by finding own light in the darkness.

The first time that I read Acetylene, I was blown away by Quinn's grasp of language, and her ability to transform a seemingly mundane object or concept into something stunning. The second time I that I read it, I did so with Google open, in an attempt to fully appreciate the historical and intellectual depths of the collection as much as I did the emotional and linguistic. Soliloquies at the Outer Banks are particularly breathtaking.Cannot recommend this enough! :)

This stunningly brilliant first collection of poems transports us to such deep places in the imagination as old mattresses "like sleeping bodies abandoned by their dreamers," the abandoned colony of Roanoke, a certain Lithuanian town where "what has happened has not yet happened," and a cosmos "that will go on--albeit like a piano player in a restaurant where nobody is listening." We cannot help but listen to Quinn's "chromatic nuances."

I loved this book for its emotional intelligence, its vulnerability, its agile vocabulary, and for the fascinating stories and facts I learned while reading it. Sometimes it happens that the act of thinking becomes so enjoyable, a new idea becomes so exciting, it feels like happiness or like love. It happens here, in the pages of Acetylene.