New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. 80 pages. $20.00.
Jill Osier’s The Solace is Not the Lullaby, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, begins the same way—with the same word—as Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s Song, by commanding the reader to “Listen.” Not just in an auditory manner—that would be too simple an ask—but listen to the mysteries that resonate with interiority and pathos between the musically spare and carefully chosen details that connect the narrative vignettes. Whereas Kelly wrote rich, lush, lyrical narratives that are full of restraint and turn toward the quiet magic of objects, Osier augments the same restrained style and arguments of quidditas by pairing back complex narratives to their most intimate details. Take for instance the second stanza in “Some Roads in Iowa”:
We are never loving what we think we are. Never
simply. The first thing we loved
we don’t even remember: a corner
of fabric, some handle. When we loved again,
perhaps a sound, we were actually trying to hear
fabric. We listened for corners.
In his introduction to the prize-winning collection, Carl Phillips states that the manner in which Osier constructs her stories through the brevity of carefully chosen sensory details concerns itself with epistemology. I agree, to an extent, though I would also contend that the way in which Osier omits her own witness of events is more a matter of metaphysics and the ontological relationship between imperfect memory and truth. As a result, readers are left to piece together an intentionally fragmented life. Observe this passage from the poem “We”:
In small enough towns, without even gathering,
girls tend to move like this. We swore
we surrounded something—
held it. A trunk the arms
could reach around.
This “something” is most likely a tree, but it also alludes to that which made this memory memorable and which went on to shape the speaker’s present sensibility. The exact event that created her sensibility is not as important as the sum of its parts. In fact, it is lost like a “day / like a world / slipping through its own hands.” The reader is left to relume these events through ineffable vestiges that instruct the reader to “Try / to remember the smell of sun through it all” and which remind us that “It’s less important why / and more important where / we leave some things.” The nature of being is illuminated as Osier shows us the “spare dirt,” the “scent of rotting grain,” and the ambitiousness of corn.
The Solace Is Not the Lullaby meditates on the past and childhood, but unlike so many first books, the sentimental aspects of childhood are kept at a distance. Childhood is observed through a lens that is less concerned with self-making and more interested in grappling with the unanswered mysteries that remain once we are unable to trace a straight line of events and memories back from where we come. An impressive feat, given many first books that sequence themselves around early adolescence often lean into self-pity, or romanticized and sensationalized nostalgia.
Instead, time presents itself as fluid in “Lake Saganaga” when Osier observes “the light was / as it is when you trust that it will hold, good enough / to know you may have had something / but lost it.” A line which illustrates how a single day is seared into memory through anachronistic moments. These sharp insights are ever present in Osier’s intelligent, almost Zen-like wisdom as she concludes the poem: “Certainty always stands closest / to nothing we have.” Through this sense-making of past and present, Osier creates a paradox of uncertainty. Even though we are certain we spent a day fishing once, we can’t be certain of why we remember the mundane parts of that specific day. Though the speaker is “still / remembering ourselves as a family” on this day, the dissolution of family is later assumed but never stated. Therein is the truth of the poem; however, Osier reconstructs the story from uncertain details like “shadows” and “light” and all of the things which we can’t possess or ever fully explain, a feeling which harkens back to the book’s ontological underpinnings.
On a more granular note, Osier’s book is a masterclass in syntax. Along with highly strategic line breaks, Osier cumulatively layers her poems by pivoting away from adjective + noun style constructs, layering her details after the noun, often in the middle of the sentence. This practice creates musical rhythm, tension, and wonder. Take the end of “Kansas” for example:
The quilt, unfinished, is already
heavier than the air.
She pedals faster, and the trees look
like they never do drawn, wind
more and more like her mother’s
voice, almost there, almost, gone.
Hung on the wall, the quilt
Would sag like a carcass being drained.
It could smother a body like a body.
The way Osier employs the sentence fragment in concert with unconventional sentence structure, often coupled with anaphora, further reinforces the relationship between narrative tension and the ontology of memory. The exemplary second stanza in “River” muses on the smallest detail of ice melt:
One large piece of ice the size
of a baby blanket spins,
caught. You can bet
it will break. Or watch it,
all day, softening.
Osier is a sagacious narrator, always advising the reader in manner more reflective than didactic. At the same time, she reveals the intangible truths that bind our lives together. Osier knows that “The biggest / trick is not wanting anything / too much.” And perhaps this “trick” is true of all poetry. Osier restrains herself from overt confession and narratives that bind themselves to the stark presentation of victimhood—though it must be noted that Osier still remains vulnerable and allows the reader to share in the discovery of her experience. Osier’s poems don’t want for too much, always couching the truth of some grand moment in the subtle, often overlooked particulars, such as the “the local / genius’s latest scam, the bones of carp / and bluegill, the secrets behind that / woman’s skull, busted.” These specifics are weighted with emotion and wait to be discovered in “the small river town” where the book is set. Osier is confident enough to trust her readers and their abilities to follow uncertain narratives. As Osier notes, “Trying / is sometimes rewarded.” Readers who navigate the existential pieces that serve as this book’s metaphysical scaffolding—who meditate on its omissions and its tacit, implied knowledge of life—will indeed be rewarded.