Blood sugar, sex, magic (Sarah James)
Verve Poetry Press 2022
Sarah James starts the book with an emotive quotation from the Merchant of Venice (“The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”) This served to position myself into a place of empathy and understanding for all those affected by illness or disability. In her Foreward, Sarah shares what it is like living with diabetes, a life-threatening conditions that presents many challenges. Here words in this poetry collection are open, personal and vulnerable. I sensed all three of these descriptions throughout the book and I applaud Sarah for her courage in sharing her story and experiences.
Sarah’s ordeal is exemplified in Admitted Nov 30, 1981, age 6: diabetes mellitus. The following lines from this poem are deeply impactful:
Then I press in the plunger’s
Citrus sting of cold insulin.
In the poem entitled Mâché, we catch glimpses of the difficulties that come to the surface in Sarah’s life. The fourth stanza in this poem stood out to me:
my last dog, an absent sister, our nan,
the boys with barbed mouths…
I yank harder, reach the damp shadow
of the happy cured-forever dream.
Because ghosts have bones is a wonderfully poignant poem that relates to Sarah’s sister. The chemist in me enjoyed these lines:
it’s not easy to turn sibling bone to milk
or bite through calcium phosphate
but she’s fighting for our genes.
In addition, I was deeply moved by the poem People Scare Me Because…and its opening lines:
They’re like milk bottles
on winter doorsteps: contents
distanced by glass and frozen
to my touch. Even cracked,
they’re still rigid, opaque, un-flowing.
I recommend that you bask in the imagery and language that runs through this poem. It speaks to anyone who does not always find it easy to mix with people.
Sarah shares a wonderful example of a closing line in Doing the School Run with Freud:
It’s all there, waiting in the subconscious.
This line is significant for me because it brings to mind that so many aspects of life are beyond our control or human bandwidth. This thought brings me to the constraint of our earthly lives and mortality. In Sarah’s touching poem After my Nan broke, we are invited to a special place of remembrance. I particularly enjoyed the first verse:
She shone brightest
when her body and mind
thinned to glass –
a chandelier strung
with brittle glistening.
I was impressed with the variety of forms in this book. I struggled a little with the form used in my [dead] sister’s advice on its first reading (probably because of the way my mind works). This is because of the blanks used in the poem. However, on the second reading, I began to love the poem’s effectiveness. Here is an example:
-shaking/-crunching china of contention
She plays me like the bagpipes
This collection is highly recommended by me. It will both make you better understand those who suffer on a daily basis and remind you that a healthy life is so very precious.
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Stephen Paul Wren