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Working in the realm between music and meaning, Mary Rising Higgins creates a poetry which demands the reader’s attention as it suprises with fresh insights. Though her roots can be found in the L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E Movement, she has developed her own particular coherence which resonates with emotional identity. Through its myriad details, a sense of the mythic intersects with the mundane, as in “Transitions for Eurydice” where during the journey “the trick is to drag reality into some kind of afterlife” and “this petty making sense where / relentless exhalations exchange” and “fragility extends her.” Innovative writing such as this can be difficult, yet the imaginative play in syntax and form describe “a drive toward happiness where we refuse to slow down.” One night on the desert is not like another, one life in the desert is not like an other’s. I’ve followed Mary Rising Higgins’ work in small journals for well over a decade now as she has hewn from the granite fact of this, humbly and with a poet’s patience, a first book that matters. At turns still-point and edgy, confirming and provocative, the texts in red table(S are always sourced in the rock-drill New Mexico real, yet, at their best, they touch the marvelous. — Lee Bartlett |
