Rooms Overhead (review)

believe, toward the very end. Partly, this is because Cunningham has written really only one halfofhis sales pitch. The form of that familiar genre, you will recall, begins with catching attention and focusing it on a serious, inherent problem. The author certainly does this. But then the sales pitch provides a solution, visualizes theresultsofadoptingthatsolution,andissues adefinite call to action. Like so many writers about Appalachia, Cunninghamis very perceptive in identifying a problem; he is not so good at providing a solution. Not that he does not try-his last chapter, in fact, is a description of that solution. Unfortunately, the solution is in the form of myth. Cunningham argues that recourse to myth is necessary to explain himself at this juncture and that "analytic tools" just are not appropriate in describing the future. Strange thathe shouldthink so, sinceitisthevery strengthofhis logical analysis that has made so valuable his description of the past. Also, since myth means something different to everyone whoreads it, thebookmustnecessarily go out of focus at that very place where Cunningham ought to be most clear. I also have a problem with vocabulary. Rodger Cunningham is obviously in love with words. But I wonder sometimes ifhis love of words gets between him and the reader. It did for me. At times lucid and Eenetrating, at other times even eloquent, is vocabularyoccasionally seems to exist for its own sake, not ours. Take, for example, that wonderful set of balanced clauses: "Process becomes praxis; fate becomes freedom." I admire the alliteration and parallelism in this beautifully crafted sentence. I just do not know what it means. And I have a similar problem with the paragraph in which the sentence is embedded. Unfortunately, that parafraph is the culminating paragraph of the ook. Despite these criticisms, I ampleased to have been one of the first to read this fascinating book. Rodger Cunningham is no lightweight. A native Appalachian who went on to study comparative literature at IndianaUniversity,hepossessesarangeof knowledge that can approach old subjects from strange and unexpected directions. For that reason his insights should continue to be of value to the rest of us as we search for the essence of the Appalachian heritage. -Harry Robie Sholl, Betsy. Rooms Overhead. Cambridge : Alice James Books, 1986. 72 pp. Paperback. $7.95. If winter-dead wood can blossom in spring, why can't we step out of our bodies? If we pass through death's door, why can't it swing back and reveal us on the other side? From its opening ("Elegy.") to the final poem, "The Common," Rooms Overhead asks elemental questions: Is it true/ nothing vanishes in nature? ("Elegy.") What's real?/ Right here, where I'm standing is something else standing as well? ("The GooseGirl .") What stirs the trees?/ ....Why should I grieve?/ ("Riding Hood.") How can the soul be free of its body? ("Catechism .") What is Sholl after in these spare, beautiful lines, her journey into fairy tale, memory, and scripture? In part three of "The Goose-Girl'^ she tells us: I want the real, the sound of it cracking, shiny yolk spilling like thebirth ofthe sun. And when that's done, I want to be free of wanting. Life begins by breaking into rich embodiment , which in the end it outgrows. How do we live, knowing that? How do we look beyond it? Rooms Overhead explores such mystery. The title poem remembers the grownup explanation of thunder as "angels rearranging their rooms." So the child watched ceiling cracks, thinking they might "open on another world where the lost would be found." 64 As an adult, Sholl not only watches for that opening but seeks it: for her grandmother in the wind of "Hanging Out the Wash," for the slaughtered children in "Job's Wife," for her father in "Album." Her witnesses to the possibility of such revelation are her grandmother-'coming to the end of spring/ [she] kicks off her shoes, steps out ofher faltering body" ("Spring Fragments") and the Biblical Tabitha-"God mended her. Not one stitch shows"-("Tonight I Am Mending Clothes"). Relativity, resurrection, laundry: this poet tries every door, and always the spirit answers. But the search is seldom easy. As she tells us of...