Invasive Procedures, Earthquakes, Calamities & Poems from the midst of life by Nan Socolow ’55. This collection of poems reflects on love, complicated love, death, children, nature, aging, and our place in the universe (very small - we peewee earthlings/are less than a wink). Each of these lean poems carefully hones the unruly into the -well- ruly. Take the pain of being used and discarded by a love in “Duck Duck Wolf,” the menacing variant on the kindergarten game.
You came
You saw
You pitched the woo
I bought
The Brooklyn Bridge
From you
So Caesar transforms into the classic con. The pain is graphically depicted.
You gobbled
Me up
And gnawed
My bones.
Somehow, a light touch prevails. She was a “sitting duck.” But in this game, there will be another duck for him and freedom for her.
In “Catching my Former Husband Shaving” she muses about her ex-husband’s cologne, “which used to make me/feel quite faint/and now just irritates/ Grit in an oyster.” It turns out that the irritants are what make the poems possible. The final line of the collection is “Self/ the pearl.”
