Into the deep

books:

	• Don'T Explain (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry) Elizabeth N. Sholl University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 - 80 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Into the deep

Have a pilot to fly you out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, whereupon you will skydive. Not a parachute on your back, mind you, but instead, a thousand pound anvil strapped to your ankle. Into the briny water you descend, past sharks, giant squids, down to area where the sun's glow is as foreign as another universe, all the way until you reach the bottom. Your feet connect with a ground you had almost forgotten existed within this beautiful netherworld. Welcome to "Don't Explain".

It makes me cringe, having the first review of Betsy Sholl's "Don't Explain", quite simply the finest work in poetry this past quarter century. Great penmanship has become lost in an increasingly stupid and commercialized society. And thus great writers a sadly unable to gain even the smallest snippets of recognition.

"Don't Explain" isn't for the casual reader. Nor is it for the beginning poetry reader. Betsy Sholl writes in a style unwitnessed in the works of any other. If one were to make a seismograph of the bodies of Sholl's poems, they would be charted as a 10 on the Richter scale; thoughts and conveyed ideas constantly diverting from the center, yet always managing to come back to the main point. This is literary brilliance which simply can't be mimicked. She writes in a similar style that her jazz idols such as Coltrane played sax/trumpet: mind bursting, seemingly sporatic, yet all the elements adheasing together in ways one would think impossible. Sholl's trademark style is most well executed in "Don't Explain". I have the impression that this is what Sholl was aiming for in "The Red Line" and other older works, yet "Don't Explain" is when all the elements of her writing seem to congeal into it's most solid state. This is writing at its highest peak, which in Betsy Sholl terms, amounts to the deepest depths of the human experience.

"Don't Explain" is a bit different from Sholl's other works. While its predecessor, "The Red Line" dabbled relentlessly in sociological issues, and its follow up, "Late Psalm" was a bit more timid and mellow in tone, "Don't Explain" seems to be the one which Betsy Sholl wrote for Betsy Sholl. Such courageous leaps of addressing personal issues, untouched for far too long, ultimately amount to the finest caliber poetry collection possibly ever written.

Highlights of the book include WITH YOU IN DARKNESS (a stark and poignant poem about the suicide of her schizophrenic friend, somber in its tone, yet peppered with magical, almost hallucinatory language), CHANCES, and BETWEEN PICKETS (my personal favorite, and certainly one of my top three poems ever).

Like the deep, however, "Don't Explain" will be too far over the heads of most readers. This is a very difficult read, yet one of the most rewarding experiences one could receive from language. Betsy Sholl is a goddess, though she'd probably be the last to admit it to herself.

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This collection of poems by Betsy Sholl offers revelations by weaving together seemingly unrelated events.