Review of Ruth Daigon's new book, Handfuls of Time

by Guest Editor, Bill Gleed

I could say a lot of things about Ruth Daigon's new book, Handfuls of Time, and words like insightful, clear visioned, and true would be accurate, but they would be also insufficient. What Daigon has provided in her collections of poems is a depiction of a spiritual human experience. Each poem is an examination of some particular aspect of life through the most common elements of living. It's Daigon's own certain slant for those small moments which say less about what you do than who you are, and from where you come to be whole as you are right now.

Daigon sections her book into five, each a handful of time. She moves us through each without preaching, or really even commenting. Daigon merely notices and points out the vast and fleeting moments which make up every life. She begins with a quote from Henry Miller: The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely, aware. The poems which follow, each exquisitely simple, illuminate varying aspects of the being becoming alive -- becoming aware. Her poems say, "You have this grand life which you were given. Make of it what you will, because it's the making of it that is horribly, magnificently, profoundly grand."

She begins with Invocation :...Let us bring the knower to the known/ for there are no second comings/ and what waits is just a breath away.

In what follows we plant seeds in the earth, grow the moss of history which tells us there is no such thing as no such thing; we suffer indecision in the grocery store, find miracles in the ordinary, question the responsibility of Eve, and end with the poet/artist full blown, in the sweat of invention. ... She begins with a whisker/ Glues it to the surface/ Draws the cat around it/ Then puts it out of doors...

In part two a woman emerges to make her way for herself, to make her own decisions. ... She will ask her breath/ What it is to be human/ how it feels to be/ She will trace it to its roots/ hers the choice, the act, irrational or wise... But in the end ... Between the known and the unknown/ all names are but one name/ and the power to name is finally hers. She is mature, independent, a thing in herself.

Through sections three and four the shine may be taken off the bloom but that's only the price for wisdom. She learns ... at the beginning, life was all time and no memory, now it's all memory and no time... There's even a degree of acceptance and humor in Learning not to kill them. Daigon says: Since I have learned not to kill them/ things have been easier./ Though I prefer my ghosts/ to inhabit the dark/ if they come by day/ I'll leave all the doors open. She says: the whole point is to get it right.

Like Wordsworth, whom she quotes at the beginning of part 4, Daigon gives us, "the still sad music of humanity," sung in the plain tongue. Her poems are crafted randomness arranged for reason. The controlled virtuosity of each poem, achieved through living them, made by the practice of being alive until no more practice is needed. These poems are indeed a bit like jazz. Like the sweet strains of a saxophone trailing off into the black night, Daigon leaves us with this thought: We're here for a little while/ and forever is another possibility.