Gelmi writes as a Christian and a seeker of grace and says: If you want to share in God’s glory, you must share in God’s pain. Her collection of poetry speaks to the idea that “to reach the epicenter of His [God’s] heart, that core of peace, there is no shirking that exquisitely painful Ring of Fire.” And with the cast of characters that appear throughout the collection, we face the fire head on.
The collection begins with a stunning piece called “Recoil” filled with haunting imagery, sounds, and textures. It is a poem about inflicting pain upon an innocent and about regret:
I heard the first four measures of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater
In my head
A soprano sang, accompanied by flutes
I loaded the rifle
the shells were from Czechoslovakia
There were two of them
side by side
A doe and a stag
I shoot with a gloved finger
perhaps out of deference
held the barrel of blued steel
pulled the trigger
and watched him fall
almost human in the brush
Stock-still she stood beside him
Ignorant of the violent habits of men
Focusing beyond me, as if upon an apparition
She did not blink
wide-eyed as a Madonna
Why hadn’t she run?
And so I watched with
an almost percussive remorse
the felled stag
flickering with life
All fur, save for a patch
worn off his thick neck
where she had rested her head
for so long,
following his movements, his lead
I realized then, flutes are too thin for sacred music
I realized she was blind
Many of the poems in the collection are written with kindness and even unexpected humor toward all of God’s creatures, like the Dalmatian in “Josh” that must now perambulate in a baby stroller after a previous owner took a hammer to its knees:
Look, I cannot look, his mottled frame,
his scarred legs
I glimpse his pulse, his wrists are thin,
Translucent, like silk scarves
To tell you the truth,
I never wanted this,
this! are you following me?
Her compassion is not, of course, limited to animals. With human beings, however, there does seem to be a tacit acknowledgment of the part we can play in some of our sorrows In “Love Poem,” she deftly captures the desperation of a young girl clinging to the waning affections of an older man, painting an ambience and an emotion in just a few words:
I blew you kisses through cheese cloth
You looked at me as if I were your cousin
You can’t leave now, I said
Who raised you wolves?
Trying to snag you with red scarves,
Trying to keep you alert
my spine curving like candy amid the ruin
Although she mostly writes in free verse and sometimes exhibits an easy, jazzy style, the poetry in this collection tends to reflect Gelmi’s classical training and educational pedigree. According to her biography, she holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Barnard College, Columbia University and both a master’s degree and a fellowship from Boston University where she taught under the aegis of three Nobel laureates.
As a former member of The White House Correspondent’s Association and a writer for magazines and national daily newspapers, she is equally at home with local vignettes and poetry involving genocide and larger global events.
Campesinos, for example, reads like a dirge to lives lost in El Salvador. Her first book was Who’s Afraid of Red, a novel in three parts revolving around the tragic events that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.
James Dickey, the distinguished American poet, once called Gelmi’s writing “powerful.” I would agree. Gelmi’s power lies in her willingness to look pain, loss, and folly in the eye and not blink. She sees it all, she accepts, and so do we. And therein lies a certain peace.
The author can be reached at agelmi@netzero.com