Lawrence Barrett Review of I Am South by Donna Snyder, Virgoray Press, 2010; Available at www. virgoraypress.blogspot.com.

Donna Snyder, an accomplished, well-known and published El Paso poet and writer has delivered her first book, or rather chapbook, with a style that can be characterized as uniquely her own. Not one to obfuscate meanings, Snyder writes with searing clarity and in-your-face commentary that is refreshing because, thank God, one does not have to sit and agelessly ponder a puzzle-work of abstractions.

I can’t write subtleties by nature

I articulate experience in blatant terms

I name the emotion

Snyder also employs hugely scenic, dramatic and emotive imagery which sort of shimmers and moves her work along, at times, embryonic and dreamlike. Snyder begins her work with an ekphrastic piece, “A Pastel Study in Shadow.”  Snyder writes in “Part Three” of her “Pastel Study”:

She sits alone with her guest

In the non-light of dusk

Her feet firm on the floor

Calls it by name without distress

Hands warm on sloped thighs

When the light fades

The shade will eat

The lilac dust

Snyder reaches a crescendo of haiku simplicity that undulates like most of her work with a premise of sadness akin to the ancient sorrow of mystic Irish Bards. Her craftsmanship as a poet really shines through with the brevity and jazzy rhythms of her shorter pieces. “him all Jack Kerouac and shit” slides off the tongue like scat singing:

her all this is only just for now you know

An ephemeral spring so drink up fast

When it ended she hardly noticed lost

So was she in grief for pretty words

Mirror shards piled like minnowy regrets

All caught up in the moment she almost knew

 

 Snyder effortlessly captures a music in her work which is certainly the mark of any good poet. “Brother” falls like a short waltz across the page and “Blame it on Neruda”  twists with wit and nice turn of phrase. “Dreaming in Cards” ripples with smooth transitions of potent imagery measured alongside a slow beat.  “I Am South,” Snyder’s title piece, bristles like a poetic manifesto in that Snyder sums up not only what dimensions of north and south make her the artist she is today but also what very visceral and gut sense her experience of poetry is like:  “South is where I learned to swallow Pablo Neruda like rum.” Truly, at moments, Snyder’s poems intoxicate.