BONNY BARRY SANDERS

BONNY BARRY SANDERS

The force behind Ms. Sanders’ first book of poetry gathers itself quietly behind its evocation to listen with something more than the hearing ear.  Her poems have the courage to juxtapose transience with transcendence.  As the title of the book announces, her poems deal with the contradiction between the seen and the unseen, while they derive their substance from the quotidian of our lives, from our arts, and what lies beyond our doorsteps.  Sensitive and subtle, Ms. Sanders’ elegiac tone provokes a landscape of awe but not mystery, and her surprise endings often jolt the reader into a new perception, or at least an unexpected one.  The ending of “Winter Sunset on Hills Beach” serves to exemplify this:

                 The eye follows long glassy, salmon-                 colored beaches, past the tangerine towers

                 of Old Orchard, past Portland, out to sea

                 and back again.  Everything rinsed

                 in the sun’s old resin.

                 The same orange on my shoes.

 

Ms. Sanders’ poems in Touching Shadows work with a strong sense of the deep image and are largely felt and memorable.

 

One wonders whether it is the charm of the love story or the authentic regimental history that rivets  the readers’ attention to each page.  In any case both aspects combine to create a novel that is truly a page-turner.  Critic, Sharon Scholl writes that it portrays “the Civil War as two ordinary people reveal it in all its panic, boredom, dissention, and corruption….Here we have writing shaped by the nuances of nineteenth century speech, spare and reticent, but surprisingly frank about the suffering, profiteering, and egregious violence of the Civil War….It’s a story of the triumph of decency despite the demolition of our nation’s social fabric.”  It’s taut language keeps the edge on tension keen with the cognizance of potential danger or death at every turn.

Yet the novel is grounded in poetic metaphors and sensibilities as well as in basic contrasts.  It’s the story of one man’s journey  another man’s redemption.

Touching Shadows

Kiss Me Good-bye (Published Spring 2007)

Works

Works