Poetic Justice

       -- some thoughts on the work of Sylvia Ross





     It came in the mail, the second, expanded edition of Acorns and Abalone, a collection of poems, drawings and short stories by our beloved local author, Sylvia Ross.  First published in 2011 as "a collection of work" that she thought she put together mostly for her family, this 2013 edition is even more beautiful and more a gift to all of us who love truth and beauty in this natural world we inhabit and the long history of our relationship to this land.

     She's also finished a second edition of East of the Great Valley, a heart-breaking, mind-opening Civil War-era historical novel set in the Sierra foothills based on her Chukchansi great-grandmother's life.  Thinking about both works, I realized that what Sylvia accomplishes with her short poems, delicate drawings, and spare storytelling is justice:  she does justice to the truth of our complex lives and reveals the beauty of knowing it.

     Under the heading "Out of Sandy Loam and Red Clay," Sylvia has added 11 poems and three drawings to Acorns and Abalone.  In some, like "Reparation," she shows how the past lovingly cohabits the present:

 

a mother-in-law's

small even stitches mended

more than torn fabric

 

an elegant patch

where kind words sewn would soften

another's cruel

 

her sewing basket

with pins scattered out of place

waits for diligence

 

the fraying wicker

coaxes my complicity

in making repairs

 

     In others, she unravels the complexities of the food chain and our complicated place sort of at the top, from sea gulls eating shellfish resulting in beautiful shells on the beach to mosquitos sucking our blood.  In "The Hawk," she shows the painful reality of intercepting the eat-or-be-eaten cycle: 
 

          "....

           The hawk couldn't know her impulsive motive,

           how she intended the bird turned free to live,

           to fly, and how unable to loft the bird skyward,

           or let it go, she too was trapped.  In fear she heard

           a reedy high-pitched music screaming out

           filling the air, the shrill piercing noise of a shout

           going beyond the barn, a cry sent reaching

           to the sky - her own voice - a hawk's screeching."

 

     The new edition of Acorns also includes a short chapter from East of the Great Valley.  It is about the first Anglo heroine we meet in the book, Nancy McCreary, whose death early in the story left me bereft.  Nancy's truths carry on in her boys and eventually rescue the Indian girl Nancy saved as an orphaned infant, doing justice to the humanity of some people regardless of race.  But this chapter delicately lays out the human pecking order that masked the competition for land and the eat-or-be-eaten attitudes of those who came to dominate it.

     The new piece that took my breath away, however, is the poem "Frazier Valley," set against her drawing of the lone pair of palm trees there, a scene we here know by heart from driving the Frazier Valley Road:












 
     This 2013 Edition does more justice to the breadth of Sylvia's work.  I hope we will be seeing and hearing more from her in the future.  Both books are available locally at the Book Garden in Exeter, online at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com, or directly from Sylvia herself at (559) 594-4743.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a wanna-be poet with a photographic eye who loves what her mind sees in Sylvia's pages.  You can send her your favorite passages of Sylvia's work % P.O. Box 1374 or leave a message below.