Forthcoming December 2010 from Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press, The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake is a saddle-stitched chapbook featuring cover design by Chelsea Stockton. These poems explore the experiences of a former college professor's descent into dementia--the failings of the body and mind, the loss of sense and language through Alzheimer's--and the ways in which old love can survive.
These affectionate, observant poems bring us landscapes and figures we would not otherwise see, and it is our gain to know them. This is a determined scrutiny of love, that brings us, in particular, the poet’s grandfather in his decline, in his departure, and it adds to our sense both of how full and affectionate human existence can be and of the toll that aging and sickness take on a once vivid life. Of the many strong, multi-layered poems gathered here, I would single out the soliloquy, a three page tour de force, in which the poet enters and inhabits her grandfather’s voice, where he now sees his former beloved, once a partner in “that lubdub of this old love” as “that stranger in the garden.” Molly Sutton Kiefer’s poems contain many such antitheses, articulated always with painterly clarity, and one leaves these pages feeling privileged to have been given these glimpses of such life-affirming people by way of the poet’s brave and tender attention.
It's uncanny that a young poet can write with such assurance, grace, and quiet wisdom about memory and forgetting, about the mysteries of aging. In the end, these are love poems, grief and joy poems, sign posts as much as memorials since they not only resurrect the past, but show readers a path toward the future, "the body burdened by memory." Sutton Kiefer's voice both challenges and enchants. What a pleasure to read these poems!
The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake is a tender and sometimes heartbreaking homage to the poet’s grandparents and the sixty-seven years that made up “the polished kettle” of their love. One of the shortest poems of the collection ends with this question: “Why is it / that our bodies fail us, these cabinets / we always trusted?” Molly Sutton Kiefer knows better than to say she knows the answer to this question; instead she shows us ways to remember even as we let go. “There’s always that lingering, the last time in the doorway, / the finality of a light switch, going out.”
The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake is a beautifully-crafted, patient, and observant collection. A metaphor for the reflecting pool of imagination, Middle Sand Lake is both tangible setting for the Sutton family characters, and constant reminder of the fragile path we navigate through life. Personal in the best way, these poems are specific and communicative. Sutton Keifer has a firm grasp on emotions that enrich and deepen experience.
