What a Risk to Love

Here’s a poem for you:

  Dark Praise

  My sister had to cut off her breasts. My daughter 
  asks for a new pancreas. I may be a fool
  to believe in goodness. What a risk to love
  the soldier who tells me he was hauling ass 
  when a girl ran in front of his tank. He can’t
  sleep. I can’t sleep. I can’t shake the sound 
  he said her body made. My sister 
  is a whole new you. She changed her hair, 
  her name, and she looks good. My daughter
  could go blind. We don’t talk kidneys 
  or transplants or amputated feet. 
  The soldier told me blood is unreal
  on a windshield. He can’t sleep. He likes
  to drink. I like to drink, too. I raise a glass
  to my sister’s new breasts. Praise my daughter’s
  needles, insulin, blood tests. I drink for the girl
  who, if there’s mercy, never knew what was coming.

    ~ Laura Van Prooyen

Surprise can arrive in many guises. One of them, it seems to me, is the shock of the unexpected, tersely delivered. “Dark Praise” opens with a gut punch: “My sister had to cut off her breasts.” No soft opening, no trigger warning. Two harsh family facts: disfiguring surgery, followed by the possibility of organ transplant.

This poem arrives eleven pages into Frances of the Wider Field, a remarkable collection of poems about losses incurred over a lifetime—pages radiant with heartbreaking tenderness. Here, the poet dispenses with tenderness—in the service of blunt honesty. Straightforward declarative sentences, a kind of just-the-facts approach, leading to the poem’s third shock:

            What a risk to love
  the soldier who tells me he was hauling ass
  when a girl ran in front of his tank. 

Risk and love are important words here. There is risk in writing this kind of poem, risk in squarely facing what must be faced, risk in having a heart open to love. Empathy, too, in this poet’s blunt honesty. Witness how she closes:

              I drink for the girl
  who, if there’s mercy, never knew what was coming.

I think, perhaps, what I admire most about “Dark Praise” is that Laura Van Prooyen doesn’t let herself get in the way, doesn’t use language that solicits sympathy. Instead, briefly, she addresses three facts and then her own response: compassion for soldier, sister, daughter—and for the girl in the path of a tank. A reminder here, for all of us who write. There is value in restraint.

Note:

Frances of the Wider Field was a Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Book of Poetry and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards. Laura Van Prooyen is also author of Our House Was on Fire, nominated by Philip Levine, awarded the McGovern Prize and the Writers’ League of Texas Poetry Book Award. Raised in a tight-knit Dutch community just outside of Chicago, Van Prooyen lives in San Antonio, Texas. She is a recipient of an Artist Foundation of San Antonio Individual Artist Grant.

Frances of the Wider Field is available here ⇒