Before the Light Changes
Irene Blair Honeycutt
Main Street Rag
ISBN Number: 978-1-59948-151-7

Reviewer: Alice Osborn

          Irene Blair Honeycutt’s third book of poems, Before the Light Changes, examines how death creates emotional and physical holes and how these empty spaces permanently change those who carry on the memories of the deceased. Honeycutt dedicated this collection to her late brother, Ronnie, and made Ronnie the subject of eleven out of fifty-three poems. Most poets have obsessions or subjects they continually return to—Honeycutt is no different. Death, illness, aging, family, the Baptist church, snakes and fairy tales are all recurrent images. The majority of her poems use the “I” voice, yet they look past the first person into either the larger questions of life’s absences or into the smaller moments of slicing an apple, of filling birdfeeders, or of opening a filing cabinet. This is a poet who trusts her muse, and it’s refreshing to know that she’s following her instincts, balancing the playful music and intellectual weight of her lines. Her creative line breaks, concrete poems (“Persimmon Tree,” Fresh from Reading You, Merton,” and “October 7, 2001”), dropped lines, and indents all reinforce her themes of absence and silence.      

          Before the Light Changes is divided into four sections: “The Absence That We Tend,” “True Remnant,” “Clearing A Path,” and “Little Offerings,” with the strongest poems centered in the latter two. Grouping her poetry into obvious sections allows the reader to make connections between the overarching themes of death in “True Remnant,” or of the overlooked world, as in “Little Offerings.”

          In “Her Habit of Being,” the speaker, presumably Honeycutt, spends time with a friend who has dementia.

Not knowing how this will end,
I begin my usual litany:
“Who was the first president?”
She fires back:
            Washington.
            Adams.
            Monroe.
“What’s your favorite novel?”
            Can’t remember. Harper Lee wrote it.
            But what I want to know is:
            Who killed the mockingbird?

          This is the first of several poems which address memory loss and the loss of a person’s dignity as they age. Honeycutt provides rich details as she tightly controls her lines, so they never veer off on a sentimental tangent. However, she’s not immune to ending on an overly emotional note. In “On the Second Anniversary of My Brother’s Death,” her religious mother demands that Honeycutt and her brother be baptized. Although the narrative flows well through stripped down images and spare details, the last stanza doesn’t earn back the poem’s deeper significance of obeying a parent despite personal reservations.

You must’ve been proud, Mama.
And relieved. You wanted to save us.
Just as we’d grow up trying to save you
from the demon bottle of despair.

          The energy of Honeycutt’s writing perks up when she steps out of her meditative world and sifts through historical and journalistic subjects. In “Bulgaria’s last dancing bears finally footloose,” she captivates with her conversational verse and short lines:

Imagine a campfire surrounded
by mobs filling the night with jeers
and laughter as an old bear appears
from the shadows,

bows to flickering faces.
Before beginning its dance,
the bear gazes deep
into the dark forest,

then edges closer to the fire.
Again and again it circles.
A man rises, yanks its chain.
The bear stares at the stars

while the man forces whiskey
down its throat.

          In “Katrina” she almost offers nothing fresh or new—we all know what happened four and a half years ago. But her last two lines end on a haunting image that creates emotional resonance devoid of sentimentality. Again, she repeats her major themes of absences within the small moment.

We saw their homes hijacked, ransacked, reduced to rubbish,
                                    pushed aside

like the old woman who died
in the Superdome,
left behind in her wheelchair.

            From our homes we viewed
            the unclaimed bundle.

          Even within a poem that seems to not be about loss, such as “File Named ‘Quiet Places’,” Honeycutt again manages to integrate her global themes. Unlike “On the Second Anniversary of My Brother’s Death,” this poem earns its ending and surprises the reader.

I open the file,
thinking I’ll find a draft

The only draft is the breeze
at my back,

sweet touch
through the window screen.

I can’t let go —
what I didn’t write.

Surely,
I meant something.

…

Perhaps it’ll be a piano
            without music.

An accordion
            without Piaf.

Or you, me
            without the sea.

Anything other than a page
as blank as the day someone leaves.

          As is the case with many of us, Honeycutt has a fascination for, and maybe a fear of, snakes. “Snake Etching” is one of my favorite poems in her collection because it records a snake’s murder with compassion. She uses tight lines, generous spacing and no punctuation to express a loss that some might welcome:

when the pickup truck
rounds the corner        picks

up speed and swerves
not to avoid      but to run over

the long sleek body

I avert my eyes
not wanting to believe

look back and witness

a silhouette of spasms   against backdrop
of red tail lights           evening grass and asphalt

the snake live enough to curl
heave its head              hold it there

do what it best does     when it must
bare fangs       flash tongue

hiss

          Her other poem about snakes, “If This Were a Fairy Tale,” inverts the frog and the princess fairy tale when the snake she observes swallows her garden frog head first.

The snake’s tail inched backwards,
guiding the winding body.
The frog’s struggle deep inside
ceased.

The snake curved
and seamlessly disappeared
beneath the air conditioner,
bearing my story with it.

          Through quiet observation and cherishing the small moment, Honeycutt mines her poems’ emotional centers. She could have avoided sharing vulnerabilities and losses with her readers, but instead plunged headfirst into the process. As a result of her risk-taking, her poems are memorable and may offer succor to readers going through similar experiences and losses. Some might say poems shouldn’t be sentimental, but they should still touch readers’ hearts. Honeycutt succeeds admirably.