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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > Issue 56 > Reviews >Anne Whitehouse's Blessings and Curses

Blessings and Curses
Anne Whitehouse
Poetic Matrix Press
ISBN Number: 978-0-9824276-3-7

Reviewer: Janelle Adsit


          With Blessings and Curses, Whitehouse counts both her blessings and her curses—literally: except for the first and last of the series, each poem is named either “curse” or “blessing” and is numbered. The blessings and curses are, by all appearances, pulled directly from Whitehouse’s experience. She closes the poem “Blessing XXXIII” with a direct address to her husband: “have you guessed/ I am writing of us?” Such is the remarkably personal nature of this book. Whitehouse wears her heart on her page. As such, one feels the need to hold the book delicately, to refuse an incisive literary analysis. In fact, the poet explicitly requests a “safe place without censure” for her writing—the plea is made to the self, but it stands for the reader as well.

          “Blessing XXV” speaks to Whitehouse’s labors in writing her second novel Rosalind’s Ring. From it, one might assume that Whitehouse has toiled over each word of this book as well. However, this work has the feel of fresh ink, as if it is a journal of in-the-moment jottings or a devotional of sorts. Meditative and self-reflexive, Whitehouse is keeping track of a life. She is not carefully considering her words as lexical constructions. Rather, her attention is on how she fills up a life and how others do as well.

          She states that she writes for the joy of inspiration. For her, the process of writing happens in this way: “a braided rope of meaning and sound/ descends for me to climb,/ and I feel the blessing radiate/ through my being like sunlight.” Anne Whitehouse welcomes readers to join in her bliss. “Go, Reader, to Your Ease!” she writes. “May you give minutes where I spent years!” She wishes the book to be edifying. (For the record, blessings outnumber curses 40 to 24.) And she wants to speak soul to soul.

          The book is likely to offer companionship to some, but its perspective may be wearisome to other readers. For instance, the lines “When Moses died, he left us/ with God’s blessings and curses/ falling on us equally” may seem naïve of positions of privilege. That her “greatest curse” is the worry that she has “offended someone,/ forgotten an obligation,/ missed a deadline, or slipped up/ in one of seemingly endless ways” may make Whitehouse exceedingly relatable; it also might reveal her as a poet with a relatively small circumference of vision.

          Opening the book, the reader may hope for a revision of the terms “blessing” and “curse.” But Whitehouse predictably names forgiveness a blessing and money troubles a curse. Unequivocal praise for Gretchen, “the angel/ of the Homelessness Prevention Program,” is sustained for five stanzas under a title that, of course, classifies her as a blessing. The reader may scan for a different note.

          Notably, Whitehouse does exhibit some wariness of absolutes. The series is bookended with poems that are both blessings and curses. These terms can identify the same event, Whitehouse allows. But the fact remains that most poems are headed with either “curse” or “blessing.” These titles loom over the page as reductionist judgments. Because these titles offer a categorical reading of every scene and person described, they preclude surprising complexities. For instance, “Curse VIII” depicts a collision in the park between two runners—a man who falls and is injured and a woman who stands “not close but nearby,/ watching him without approaching.” The poem ends by highlighting the complicated relations between these two characters:
The fallen man let loose
one more scream
and spread his arms wide
while medics lifted him
on a stretcher and evacuated him.
Not until he was gone
did she walk away.
          One could find in this stanza a number of interesting ambiguities and ambivalences. However, if one revisits the decided title, the suggestiveness of the scene is diminished. The reader is asked to understand this scene as a curse—plain and simple.

          Whitehouse must be applauded for her ability to select details and assemble them line-by-line. “Blessing XXI” provides a snapshot that is impressive in its vivid accessibility.
His screened-in porch and garden,
His barn and wisteria arbor,
The pooled water of the wetlands
And the view from his own hill
Overlooking it all.
          This poem is an example of Whitehouse’s capacity for restraint, and there are others—many of which incorporate the technique of quoting other people’s words at length. This willingness to let a character speak for himself/herself in action and word helps to counteract the overbearing titles.

          What also helps is Whitehouse’s display of her ambivalences. Although she went with a press that publishes books with a Buddhist perspective, the poet displays mixed regard for most creeds, Buddhism included: "It mattered not to him that nothing lasted,/ and I counted it a blessing and a curse." The poet is ambivalent about the long-held idea that our creations outlast us. Of seashells, she writes, “they seem more beautiful to me than works of art,/ mysteries without/ the animals that made them.” Read these lines against the final poem, which portrays Buddhist monks making a Mandala before touristy viewers at the American Museum of Natural History. Whitehouse records the words of the monk:
"We will take the Mandala
to the Hudson River and offer it to the water.
The museum wants to preserve it.

They will uses sprays to fix the sands,
but they won't work. It will be given back;
the cycle must continue."
          Whitehouse delivers the life-affirming line. From her, expect the overstated and clichéd (e.g., “The greatest love is one/ that demands no response/ but gives fully and completely”) mixed with the careful description (e.g., nostalgia is defined as “the sudden opening/ of the past into the present”). Also expect close proximity to the writer. The book is a face-to-face encounter. Blessings and Curses is a lovingly constructed, amiable attempt to take the reader by the hand.
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