Violet Transparent (review)

Anne Coray’s second book of poetry continues her long gaze at her homeland in the far north country of Alaska. Rooted in the landscape of Qizhjeh Vena (Lake Clark), where she lives in a cabin far from any city or highway, Coray spreads her arms wide to the world, finding insight in their intersection.

Violet Transparent has three sections: “Red,” “Blue,” and “Looking Through.” In each, poems delve into the apparent and not-so-apparent metaphors, meanings, and appearances of these colors—and their blending into violet. In the title poem, Coray writes, “In winter, just before sunset, / the sky sometimes turns violet, / red and blue in a blend so brief,” and in that blending she learns “what most of us come to know: / the best we can have is the welcome / of looking through” (80).

In many poems, Coray begins with an intimate view of her home landscape, and then, like the filling of lungs with a deep breath, expands it to encompass an often far-ranging event. “Mirror of the Ages” opens us to the vastness of evolutionary history through one intimate, imagined experience, with consistent stanza lengths containing it all. In other poems, the expanding breath takes us to some horror that humans have set upon each other and the world. Some are historical events: “Blue Mountain Pine” contrasts “the skiff ’s keel / furrowing calm water” with the early Russian fur trader who learned “how many Aleut bodies, tied in a row, / it took to stop a musket ball” (40). Others, such as “Ground Hymn” and “In the Land of Dismal Spangles,” are contemporary concerns of species extinction and climate change.

Even in harshness, her lines ring with beauty and stunning revelation—the Galapagos tortoises are “Old pacifists of the slow blink,” and in “Flare,” she notes, “We do not die beautifully like the salmon” (14, 33). These connections, between such tender beauty of “the first, pink fist of a rose” and such harsh reality as a young woman’s violent death in “The Sixth of May,” serve to remind us that this is all the same planet, all the same history, that what happens in any given time and place reverberates everywhere and always (47). Throughout, sky and land, seasons and weather provide grounding and meaning. “Late Bloomer” bursts with the sudden exuberance of Alaska’s brief, light-filled summers. In “Cold Spell,” it is snow that is “a bright alarm / warning You’d better love. It’s not forever” (44).

The intellectual depth she brings to her subjects reminds one of the poetry of Linda Bierds; the cultural depth is resonant with Linda Hogan’s work. But the result is a singular voice deep in the heart of the far north country.

Coray gazes deeply into the natural world, unflinchingly dissecting humanity’s transgressions and digging beyond them to find there, in the moments of an attentive life lived close to the Earth, a grounding—like the grip of kelp to rock, waving long fronds through ocean storms, held fast.