The Resisting II & The Resisting III by Meg Founds

Both of these chapbooks ooze production value. The poems and vignettes were all set up as poems and seem interchangeable, so I read them and treat them for the purposes of this review as all poems. The illustrations alone are worth the price of each chapbook (whatever those prices are). The illustrations are illogical and dream-like, more surreal than romantic, more dada than fantasy. That said, many of the poems connect wonderfully with their allotted illustration. In the poem The Migraine the poet details a delightful side effect of her migraine, one that overshadows the debilitating headache. Not easy to do. This side effect is called synesthesia, or transferred sensation. Here are the key lines,

Simultaneous perception

I saw little white butterflies or moths flutter

From the tip of our Christmas tree

And at the very same time I smelled cinnamon

Wafting into the room from the kitchen

Where there was no one baking.

The picture on the opposite page strikes all the right chords as you read the poem including minimizing the suffering from the migraine.

The poem Gone Fishin’ At Old St. Paul’s juxtaposes a bucolic day of lake fishing with grave stones and cemetery mourners.  The mourners are laying flowers down for their loved ones and at the same time showing curiosity about the day’s catch. Resolution comes from an unexpected source,

Organ music wafted from the church

Someone had forgotten to lock the instrument

But the music sounded appropriate and proper

A medley, a backdrop for mourners

And fishermen alike.

Paired with this poem is the picture of a romanticized angel playing a mandolin at the intersection of a coast scene and a country scene with geometric lines to stress the imposition of the figure on another context and its artificiality.  It works!

For more of my review of The Resisting II & The Resisting III by Meg Founds go here: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2012/03/resisting-ii-selected-vignettes.html