Tenderness and Terrific Language: A Review of Escape Velocity by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut by Naomi Thiers
By Naomi Thiers
Tenderness. Muscular, crisp language that uses scientific terms. Elegiac poems with earthy tones. Poems in nonce forms (a form made up by the writer for that particular poem). A sense of inclusiveness—of a speaker who welcomes to her embrace both odd metaphors that somehow work and people from her past who have hurt or exasperated her—and also embraces odd words (misanthrope, plushy, shifty-sharp). All these are things I find in Kristin Kowalski Ferragut’s new book, Escape Velocity.
I kept coming back to the idea of tenderness reading these poems. In the speaker/writer’s approach to life, I feel a suspension of judgment; here’s someone who displays great, gentle fondness for the world, who finds joy in a tiger lily, “our beer-soaked weekends,” or in the small ways someone tries their best, even in the crappiest year of their life. How often is tenderness the main feeling suffusing a collection these days? Especially a collection drawing heavily on imagery from physics, meteorology, transportation, and machinery. Take one of my favorites, “Change Takes Energy.” It mixes scientific facts with the raw feelings of divorce and lonely parenting, then ends in momentum:
Thunderstorms rotate into hurricanes, rockets hit
escape velocity over 25 thousand miles per hour, birthday cake
bakes at 350 degrees to tender perfection. No reason to expect
any leftovers. Babies can’t loan you thirty bucks
and butterflies won’t take out the trash upon emerging
from the chrysalis. And she isn’t the one with whom,
You tied the knot, fumbling hands recalling torn-through
mittens on the rope tow because the hill was just too
steep and you never did learn to ski. Gloriously
happy with the band on your finger, all that hide and seek
behind you. He wouldn’t keep you safe or bring you
soup, but still a kind of resting place. Buried beneath
pills and knives, scars and scarves, you’ll never find
him now. You fueled the escape and don’t quite begrudge
it, except in what is misunderstood as finite. All these
Worries of loss overlook what science shows us—renewable
energy in wind, tides, sun, your heart and the smile
you give your kids after taking out the trash.
Each section of the book is named for a term or principle in physics. The section, “Force” deals with two realities: the ache of great changes happening—being driven from home by a fire, hurricanes blowing everything we own away, divorce—and with leaning into change by finding deep friendships and love in late middle age (I don’t know, of course, if the speaker is the poet in these poems—that’s nunmy business—but to me, the speaker of most poems sounds like a middle-aged woman). Hey, Kowalski Ferragut seems to say, there are fresh ways to write about falling in (or losing) love. Two poems in a nonce form (a 3-line stanza with a pattern imposed on the indentation) reflect this. Again, tenderness shows up. Here’s the first stanzas of “Whispers Enough” about new love:
She wanted to love like
a whisper;
Him leaning
in, breath on
cheek; listening.
Her lips curved
upward reaching for
sky; his hands holding
hips to anchor
them both, a kind of home.
Nests, cabins, caves –
homes as well. She considers
tapestry or making do.
And here’s three stanzas from “Transgendered Ex at Son’s Birthday Party,” about an awkward situation involving a past partner:
I think to change into a T-shirt,
something in which I can chase kids with water guns,
something that disregards cleavage and shoulder.
You arrive in a pretty little dress.
It’s edgy, a sweetheart neckline
white with black trim and little crickets and bees
perched about.
. . .
I give you a hug and you feel dewy, like a woman glistening.
Never before good at forgetting, I cannot now remember
what it was like to be yours.
In the section “At Rest,” the poet gets face to face with loss—the death of parents and friends, the burying of a long marriage. But a very subtly funny poem (there are several such poems in the collection) starts off the section. One thing I know about Kowalski Ferragut is she’s a special ed teacher—and she surely has a twisted mind to come up with “If Eulogies Read Like IEPs”:
She demonstrated relative strength
in solving simple equations but required
support to solve multi-step word problems.
. . .
She took on too much. Did too little.
Lacked perspective to know this millennium
is not a Renaissance. She required reminders
that dinnertime came very fucking night.
Although observers note she acted weird,
she maintained efforts to seem normal
This poet observes, with openness and curiosity, people and stories around her: a tantrum-y child (“Repress Nothing”), a quiet man visiting his pet’s grave (“Sugarloaf Pet Gardens”), an imagined 20-something girl who buys a used “Vintage 69” shirt the speaker once owned (“Midlife Legacy”) and falls passionately for her date when she wears it. These poems tell common stories that follow common laws of attraction, repulsion, gravity, and they make me think of a quote I read recently, I think said by Mary Karr, poet, essayist, and memoirist: “Most of what happens to people in life is banal—unless it’s happening to you.” I think of that quote because the stories, people, and emotions weaving through these poems don’t feel banal; Kowalski Ferragut makes them remarkable through language.
Kowalski Ferragut, Kristin. 2021. Escape Velocity. kelsaybooks.com.
Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.
*****
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.
You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.