Reviewed by Robert Dunsdon
The Music of Being
by Jean Nordhaus
Broadstone Books
November 2023, 80 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1956782530
Jean Nordhaus has a lot to worry about, what with “the clock of the world” unwinding and everything. And to make matters worse, those worries manifest themselves as little creatures with tiny feet and hair-thin feelers crawling all over her. But she copes; she soothes herself with cooling cream and seeks comfort in the idea that soon she will shed her “thirsty crust” and sprout:
giraffe spots or a hippo’s glossy sheen.
I mean to molt. I mean to grow
a larger, shinier body.
And it’s just that attitude of necessary positivity which underscores so much of the work in The Music of Being, her sixth full collection. The music here refers not to those lyrical interludes that are occasionally, randomly granted us as enlightenment or compensation, but to something altogether more fundamental: the ceaseless, unheard rhythms that propel us, barely noticed, through the days; that allow us to go on.
A symbolic illustration of that force which accompanies us no matter the sorrows, adversities and compromises, is shockingly revealed in the title poem. A photographer, recording conditions at a recently liberated concentration camp where the inmates are barely recognisable as human, notes that the only unaltered parts of their wasted bodies are the genitalia; it’s the one thing he will never forget from the devastating scenes before him: that only the very means of new life are left intact. Disturbing but ultimately unyielding, it is a particularly fine piece around which to build a collection of quietly philosophical poems illuminated by originality and depth of experience.
The poet’s Jewish heritage informs to a lesser or greater degree a good deal of what she writes, and the long sustaining shadow of that culture, interpreted in personal accounts and contemplations, makes for an absorbing read. I liked the reassurance of a poem where the past is alive, living on in a kingdom crammed (among other things) with:
rambling letters, duels, Nijinsky,
scarlet fever, and the lost scrolls
of Alexandria – not to mention my aunts
with their perfumed furs and cruel repartee,
and how we too will eventually fall into it; which is, I suppose, a comfort of sorts.
And an affecting poem in its understated, almost casual way, concerns the arrest (on trumped-up charges) and execution of the Russian Jewish writer Isaac Babel. It documents his reaction after the dreaded knock at the door as the “stars contracted to ice in their sockets”, composing himself, dressing calmly and meticulously as he prepares for the journey, knowing it, perhaps, to be his last. He even jokes with the thugs pushing him into the car. Such determination to maintain his individuality, his idea of self, is preserved right up to the end; to the moment he slips away to live as himself in the world of his stories. It’s a powerful poem, all the more so in its manner of telling.
Nordhaus’s fascination with language (born of her early exposure to Yiddish) is apparent in her handling of form, and her deft orchestration of words. But it’s the use to which she puts these gifts which elevates her work, confers on it a certain authority. It is a gentle authority, capturing the reader’s attention and holding it with skill and purpose, but more than that, there’s a knowingness, a kind of wisdom that comes off the page; whispered perhaps, but evident nonetheless.
Randomly flicking through the pages here, you might come across a snoring dormouse, small as a walnut, or a rather brilliant depiction of a universal washing line, as “Democratic and persistent / as poetry”. There’s a troupe of old men, “grizzled, gaunt as beanstalks,” dancing in a dream, and doctors sweeping into the ward like gods from Olympus, although it would seem they are merely pretending to be doctors after all. There are endless opportunities here for the poet to exercise her considerable imagination and creative energy. Dwell for a moment on the last few lines of a piece none too complimentary about the twentieth century which now lies:
…languid
as lions in a dusty zoo
who wake and stretch
from time to time
to bat at shadows
with a sheathed claw.
What a wonderfully conceived passage that is, and I was quite taken with a short piece about the scattering of ashes – those of a father perhaps or a husband – and how they hold fast to the earth, reluctant to leave just like the deceased; how, after they are sown in so many places, that “you were finally nowhere.” But I didn’t really know what to make of the brief, almost brutally brief, picture of a woman’s progress through life in the poem “I Was One”. Hopping from the cradle to school, where she is “…toothed and goofy / a breast-sprouter, a glandular / lament…”, she moves on to love and to a marriage “bristling with children and frying pans”, then quickly there comes a startling descent into old age and decrepitude, until she becomes little more than:
ashes, an odor, a whisper,
a breath among leaves.
I might guess at the mood of the poet in composing this, but I can certainly vouch for the superb imagery and phrasing found here.
The final poem in this slim but multifarious collection deserves a special mention. It references an arrival into the land pledged by God to the descendants of Abraham. Loaded with subtle allusions, cleverly wrought, it nevertheless ends with a simple sentiment: the idea that:
The promised land can be anywhere, anything:
a message long awaited, a continent, a cherished face,
a small house with the mortgage paid.
which is neither trite nor superficial, merely a considered conclusion drawn from a lifetime of witness. It’s an attitude that might be better understood, or explained perhaps, after reading the poem “Interfaith” in which the author concedes that she has “…joined the synagogue of skeptics, / where I belong, where I’m at last at home.” Both are very fine, assured pieces typical of her work.
Space dictates that I can give here only an idea of the maturity and unintrusive intelligence of the poetry that Jean Nordhaus holds out to us in The Music of Life. But I guarantee you will find her work engrossing, readily relatable and possessing, above all, an underlying integrity. It’s a winning combination resulting in an impressive, and ultimately rewarding, collection.
About the reviewer: Robert Dunsdon is from Abingdon in the UK. His poetry has been published in Ambit, Allegro, The Crank, Candelabrum, The Cannon’s Mouth, Decanto, Pennine Platform, Picaroon, Purple Patch and others. His book reviews have featured inTupelo Quarterly, Heavy Feather Review, The Lit Pub, Sugar House Review, Colorado Review, Poetry International and Los Angeles Review.