Involuntary Trust

There is a collective "Oh" that escapes the mouths of audience members at poetry readings when they hear an emotionally charged line or image. It's almost involuntary when it occurs. Dear reader, if you were like me, you deeply distrusted and, if we can be absolutely honest, envied the writers who created this effect. This notion of duality, distrust vs. envy, visual vs. verbal, contrivance vs. instinctual, permeates Randall R. Freisinger's new chapbook, Nostalgia's Thread, Ten Poems on Norman Rockwell's Paintings. Norman Rockwell is practically the godfather of fifties' Americana, white bread, jubilant teens, and Boy Scouts fearlessly gazing at their patriotic futures, yet as Freisinger acknowledges these obvious details, the "thread" of what we can only call the deeply personal nudges the reader toward the involuntary narrative that these paintings evoke again and again. Freisinger's gift as a poet is to trust the involuntary. Many of his poems speak from the vantage point of someone observing the work of art, but he also uses the poem as a meditation on the events of his life or more precisely a lens through which he views and attempts to understand his subjects.

In his opening poem, "The Discovery," he seems devoted to the contents of the painting, a boy discovering the accoutrements of Santa Claus in the lower, unfathomable drawer of his father's dresser. The identification is immediate with most readers who remember struggling with the childhood myth and the gnawing closet of questions that can't help rearing their heads as each Christmas passes by. Freisinger heightens this effect by the use of the second-person "you": "You stand aghast in your pajamas, just a boy / Of six or seven, your feet cold even on the carpeted floor, / Your back turned to your father's dresser…." This in and of itself is not particularly extraordinary; however, Freisinger quickly turns this portrait of childhood realization into the adult dilemma acknowledging that "such deception was entirely needed." Swiftly and elegantly the author expands the idea of deception to the role of fatherhood, and what began as a meditation on the loss of innocence becomes the thorny responsibilities of a parent: to play the role of whoever his children need him to be, which will allow the drama of life to continue. Now the second-person "you" seems to be nodding not so much in approval but as an acceptance of the inevitable. The actor turned father turned poet sees that the loss of innocence is also followed by the loss of the actor's props and finds him wishing only for a "graceful exit" from the stage of fatherhood and life.

In "Girl At Mirror," Freisinger changes his position in the poem to allow the reader to casually walk through an exhibit of Rockwell's paintings. He is accompanied by a woman who doesn't bother to veil her dismissive attitude of Rockwell, "the illustrator." She is schooled in art history and therefore treats the exhibit as something less than a poster sale. Then, however, against her will, she pauses in front of a painting which is of a girl, a young woman really. At her feet all of the objects of childhood seem to be scattered and forgotten. In the young woman's lap is a movie magazine, and we as an audience of the poem and the painting see yet another image of lost innocence, but now it's been transformed into the contemplation of beauty. Effortlessly, Freisinger opens the poem's inner door of frankness and purpose as it creates another portrait of his companion's first love, the difficulty of a miscarriage, and later a mastectomy.

          …the hand that led herthrough the loss of their first child, the onethat helped          her unravel the hopeless mare's nest of          a placebolover, the one a few years later stillwilling          to worship in the ruined temple of a          vanished breast.

Again, the author delivers his readers to a...