Jennifer O'Grady Explores the Limits of Human Life

On the whole, Jennifer O'Grady's 2017 collection Exclusions and Limitations, published through Madhat Press, is built upon solid (or what could called staid) poetry, and yet, there are glittering sections of language dispersed throughout the pieces like glass shattered atop a sidewalk. O'Grady's collection follows the pattern of many poetry books as it is dissected into three movements. It must be noted that she does a lovely job at alternating between poetic forms in order to keep her readers interested in the text. "Fireflies," for example, flits about in a delightful, airy manner across the page. Its lines simulate the delicate movements of those tenderly illuminated travelers the speaker ruminates on.

In her opening piece, "Shorn," with ten simple words, O'Grady immediately conveys a profound sense of compromised safety. When the speaker describes "...her arms like a room with the roof blown off..." readers will feel the ghosts of their frightened, younger selves awaken from the deep. Then in comparison, she weaves warmth and a delicious lack of complications into her words in "Two Birds Mating in a Rhododendron Bush." "If only it could be as simple this," the speaker sighs, "...the two of them unashamed and unafraid..." These little gems of language are exactly why readers should take their time when perusing O'Grady's poetry even if the styles implemented or subjects discussed are not particularly ground breaking. Rushing through this book will mean losing the beauty of such lines as "...like a child he's enigmatic and symbolic, always just about to leave." Speed readers "...will always be at a disadvantage, needing proof...," but if they move slowly, they will indeed have their proof. They will, in fact, find a curious parallel between "Photograph" and "Dusk." In the aforementioned piece, the speaker attempts to freeze her child in a photograph while in the later, the speaker remembers her own fleeting time as a child. O'Grady as a mother beats against the circle of time much as poet Karen Ankers did in her own collection.

The poem, "Nothing Could Stop it" is the primary example of exclusion in "Exclusions and Limitations." There is a purposeful omission of information within this piece which is skillfully utilized to create a fascinating moment in time. The shadows surrounding the piece make it all the more interesting to the reader; they remind the occupants of this information age that immediate omnipotence can be boring. The mysterious, even with its danger, is still beautiful, and readers must make an effort to seek out truth and meaning for themselves otherwise they will forever be "...waiting just down the road at home..."

Poet Jeanne Marie Beaumont remarks, "Our lives are not conceived with warranties, and this poet views seemingly benign moments...with a keen maternal prescience that exposes them as fraught with foreboding." The heart of the collection, "Pear in a Storm," absolutely pulses with that message. The poem highlights that "we mourn what it was as we mourn ourselves falling that way, stripping for each other." While the collection does not push its readers to the mental edge, caretakers of children may find a connection in its pages. As O'Grady remarks in "Tomorrow," "...the winter making ghosts of his breath while his body produces more and more, each one floating away to nowhere-" what curious animals human beings are, so beautiful yet destined to be destroyed. O'Grady declares that nothing is so sacred that it may last forever, not even the Madonnas she focuses on throughout the collection.

O'Grady is an accomplished writer. In addition to poetry, she writes award winning plays. Her first collection, "White: Poems," was in fact published in 2000. This is only O'Grady's second book of poetry and while there will no doubt be more on the way, her fans may have to wait.