if words could save us
Anthony S. Abbott
Lorimer Press
ISBN: 978-0-9826171-9-9

Reviewer: Alice Osborn


          If Words Could Save Us begins with the story we have all experienced if we have survived childhood, and it ends with the redemptive power of words. When innocence passes us, can we regain that lost wonder through poetry? Yes, according to Anthony S. Abbott. In this new collection, Abbott’s lifetime of travels on trains, cars, and subways serves as the metaphor for our universal life journey: we come from innocence, receive knowledge, immerse ourselves in the day-to-day of “ordinary time,” and finally arrive at the grace of old age.

          Abbott’s first section, “Providence,” contains poems about leaving childhood and innocence behind. A pair of poems articulates the relationship he has with his older sister. In “Night Journey” she shields his childhood from abrupt change, while in “Coming of Age” her leaving foreshadows greater loss (“My sister left for California/ taking with her the only home I’d known.”). Notice how Abbott’s use of the third person in “Night Journey” (quoted from below) conjures the right balance of distance and immediacy.

He trusts her, and she loves him
beyond anything, this girl brave
enough to knock on the grandparents’

door at midnight—suitcase and little
brother in hand. What does he know
about how she will pay, how she

will suffer the next day and days after
for what she has done to keep him
in the sunshine of his brown-eyed innocence.

          Abbott’s endings are a quiet shout, declaring both a felt and known truth. Sometimes images dominate, such as with “the withdrawing air” and “empty air” at the endings of two Christian-themed poems, “In Your Image” and “Noli Me Tangere.” And sometimes the ending contains a certain transmissive power.

          “Of Santa Fina and the Flowers that Bloomed from Wood” is the story of a gravely ill Italian girl from the 1200s who was blessed by St. Gregory the Great and died on a rat-infested wooden pallet. Even if one is not familiar with the legend of Santa Fina, Abbott’s stark images, gentle repetition, and fitting conclusion grant profound understanding.

…After her parents died,
her nurse, Beldia, took care of her. Eight days
before her death St. Gregory appeared

to tell her she would die on his feast day,
and she did. In Ghirlandaio’s fresco
you see the girl, fifteen, lying on her board,

all the rats but one turned into flowers,
flowers blooming from the wood itself
and then in the second painting, the miracles—

the angel, the tiny winged angel, ringing
the bells, and Beldia, the nurse, her palsied
hand healed from Fina’s touch, and the blind

choir boy holding Fina’s foot to his face.
For five years she lay on the board until
her skin became part of the board itself,

became the soil from which the flowers
sprang. The church never canonized her.
But the people did, indeed the people did.

          Abbot’s second section, “Ordinary Time,” features poems about the day-in, day-out aspects of our lives that sometimes receive a moment of transcendence. In “The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” transcendence is achieved while the speaker gazes at “the exquisite/ drip of paint/on the earring.”

The mouth
is the first thing
the way

the lips open
the lower so lovely
sensuous

the tongue just
showing
between as if

she would speak
her thoughts no
her feelings

that is really what
the painting says
Jesus look at

the eyes which
tell us all tell us
of something private…

          “At the Christmas Celebration” takes the experience of being at a boring party with your spouse and reframes it into an unexpected way. In this instance, the speaker, a poet, tries to make sense of the endless chatter and somehow arrives at a transcendental moment replete with a vision of Jesus on the cross.

He listens to the break-neck talk,
the roars of laughter at what must
be something he has completely
missed once more. He can make words
from the burning leaves of the soul

but this he cannot fathom. What
can they think of to say that brings
such smirks, such grins, such open
mouthed chewing? What news
from Bethlehem? Where do the kings

lodge tonight? Will they tell all
to Herod? Who will there be to warn
the children, to cry to the nursing
mothers—pluck up your babes
and leave before the soldiers rattle

in with their copper armor and their
thick heads. The poet wants to shout
“Fire!” and watch them all disperse
into the tumbling rain and fog out there.
But he keeps his peace. Instead he

knocks on God’s door three times
to give thanks for the strange child
who must have hammered nails himself
before the nails hammered him
and sent the world reeling into darkness.

          The final section in If Words Could Save Us is entitled “Grace.” These poems are about achieving compassionate grace with oneself and others, usually at the sunset of one’s life.

          In “The Man Who Didn’t Believe In Luck,” the speaker’s daughter has died and the speaker has repressed his emotions. He thinks he is free from pain, but grace serves him a new plan.

When the first touch came, the tears came with it.
He had kept them all in his back pocket with the memories
of childhood. He began to talk, small words
like the first hint of dawn before sunrise.

The muse stretches the legs of time. She opens
her mouth and yawns and stretches again, and starts
to move. She knows everything. Wounded words
limp forward into the river of grace.
He knows this now. We bend the knee of the heart
to the risen Christ, who loves us. She is
somewhere with him. We deserve nothing. We
earn nothing, but we are loved just the same.
Nothing to be done except to give it back.
Yesterday’s tears are tomorrow’s promises.

          These poems are immersed in loss and forgiveness, yet Abbott’s wit and humor season this collection with the right notes of charm and delight. All the while reminiscing on childhood, art, and biblical subject matter, he asks the reader to embrace a certain vulnerability: “Healing is/ the only language of love (my lamb) for/ wherever we have touched, the tree that grows/ will be blessed” (from the title poem). Indeed, finding the right words can save us.