Invasive Procedures: Earthquakes Calamities & poems from the midst of life

A poem is like a chunk of raw marble. Nan Socolow chips and chips away at that chunk and it takes form and becomes smaller and smaller still and when nothing further can be chipped away--when only the finest essence of a marble scrap is left--that is her poem: less is more.Alternatively an entire poem will write itself around an object like a sliver of dried up soap or a yellow-crowned night heron stalking on the sand outside her window. As a result Socolows poems are short and pert sweet and sour as if laced with passion fruit. She pounces upon certain moments capturing them in her net when no one else is looking as Nabokov captured his butterflies.The language is jubilant exploding into alliteration ecstasy and irony as she plucks images from the air that she has so amply breathed throughout her eventful celebratory life. Her words and music are original and powerful image and sound playing between past and present old age and youth life and death tragedy and comedy. She writes of nature marriage parenting aging death subjects that are part of all our lives all familiar but addressed with a tinge of irony and a dose of astute perception.And of course she writes of love of the joys and sorrows of lust romance courtship marriage heartbreak disappointment and separation. Hers is the voice of someone who has lived and observed life closely and fully and has distilled a wry sophisticated and acute understanding of the world and of life itself.