Rising to the Rim

In Carol Tyx’s Rising to the Rim, we are in the presence of a thoughtful and loving sensibility that speaks in a language both energetic and simply put, language that opens a door and invites us in to marvel at what these poems notice—from a red tomato hidden behind its leaves to a revelation in old hiking boots, from the loneliness of an empty house to the red surprise of a raspberry patch ready to give today “what you missed yesterday.” Time and again these poems suggest a mature poet, who has raised children and seen her parents through the end of their lives, a poet who rages deliberately at injustice and muses quietly at falling leaves or the love of a father for his young son. In this moving collection, Carol Tyx observes with great skill and invites us to watch as well, as if such attention and such singing are the practice needed “to learn/how to love everything.” James McKean There is a wise observer in these poems, someone very awake to significant, visionary elements and possibilities in experience—“trying not to close / trying to taste this late afternoon” or “tell me how one moment / stands out, luminous and wet.” Carol Tyx always convinces me in her painterly attention to things that happen, that are, in the world, and her manner and voice are characteristically refreshing, as in “The easiest way to make sure / you love someone well is to / love everything, but we know / how hard that is, don’t we?” The tenderness is unforced. This is a clear and fearless poet who can talk quite naturally to her loneliness, to her bladder, to her bed. Alert to dramas in lives other than her own, she is also unsparing in recording darker moments, diminishments, inevitable declines. Her sometimes stark sadness, her gift for the celebratory, make this a distinctive collection of poems. Michael Dennis Browne