Published by Red Mountain Press
What Lasts
by Sylvia Byrne Pollack
Sylvia Byrne Pollack’s What Lasts is a rich, musical, and witty synthesis of the layered and wide-ranging experiences of a long fascinating life. This collection is at once fanciful and realistic, mythical and science-minded, sparkling with metaphor and strung-through with fact. The poems in What Lasts constitute a spirited memoir of searching and discovery, of illness and healing, of loves lost and found, and, most pivotally, of love found lasting.
—Jed Myers, author of The Marriage of Space and Time and Watching the Perseids
The deftly-wrought poems in Sylvia Byrne Pollack's brave, disarming collection, What Lasts, offer a relentless sightline into mental illness, aging, loss, and gritty hope. The speaker journeys through an Escher maze of challenges and darkness, yet sustains herself with keen appreciations, love of family, and the beauty of the world. What Lasts is ultimately a celebration of fierce tenacity and of life itself.
—Katharine Whitcomb, author of Habitats and The Daughter's Almanac
What Lasts is available at directly from the author via the contact page on this website, or from Third Place Books.
Poems
from What Lasts
DECEMBER MORNING AT POSSESSION POINT
We yearn to know what’s out there
but still distract ourselves with bowl games,
riffs on reindeer, miracles on 34th Street.
Our horizons are so limited but what I can see
on this December day is miracle enough for me.
Grey morning sky, cats’ paws on the water
while wind tiptoes the shore, sniffing at
salt-soaked logs, scratching itself
on barnacle-bedecked rocks. The barnacles,
distanced from us by evolution’s endless
experiments, are numerous as stars
Water, wind, gulls, herons and there
just 50 yards off-shore, a pod of orcas
black and white constellation worthy of a place
in the sky with Leo, Aries, Orion.
The orcas speak in clicks and whistles
beyond our atmosphere into –
through – star-speckled space.
HOW TO MOURN
Reach inside through the narrow slit
in your left side. Like an Egyptian
funerary technician pull out liver
spleen lung intestines. Put them
in Canopic jars but leave the heart
in place. Purported seat of intellect
and emotion it’s where the Pharaohs
deemed creation starts a must-have
for the afterlife. The heart’s
the only part you must preserve.
What People Are Saying
about What Lasts
"The poems of Sylvia Byrne Pollack's newest collection, What Lasts, drew me into ways of being, familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar--the connection to the natural world (particularly of a shared northwest). Unfamiliar--the mercurial aspects of an alternate persona directing behaviors and emotions, the character Pollack names Letitia, "the queen of everywhere." Most of the poems are about a page long yet may contain years of thoughtfulness and retrospect, struggle and resolution. The poet's effective succinctness impresses me throughout this read. She arrives at powerful conclusions such as, "April can't come soon enough," "The waning oxygen/ leaves them gasping for god," and "I watch the moon winch the water away." These are personal poems--intimate and profound.”
— Pamela Hobart Carter Her Imaginary Museum
Sylvia Byrne Pollack has given us a book full of lyrical images that show us how nourishing relationships and memories are fundamental—they are “What Lasts.”
Risking It
by Sylvia Byrne Pollack
These smart, funny, beautifully crafted poems show us a whole life lived wholeheartedly. The various parts intertwine, just as they do in the book, which is one arc rather than separate sections. The riveting voice that leads us through them is sometimes refracted by other personas: The Deaf Woman, Letitia, the Black Dog, and Gregory, a talking stone. The poems touch on food, love, the natural world, politics, joy and despair, illness and aging, and mortality, but always return, finally to joy and celebration. They dare us to be fully present in our lives.
–Sharon Bryan, author of Sharp Stars
The best company has intelligence, humanity, conviction, and some je ne sais quoi factor: mischief; lovability; great dance moves. Risking It is that kind of company. Sylvia Byrne Pollack writes with relish about mortality and long love, deafness, the "frizzante bubbles of mania" and depression, from Mona Lisa's erotic life to rabbit test subjects to a soulful beach rock named Gregory. Pollack's poems are intimately familiar with the dark–especially her alter egos, Letitia and the deaf woman–but counter it with the bright glow of playful language and a keen, reverent mind. "Even the gristle/ goes into our mouths, is chewed on." This collection is a delight.
–Kathleen Flenniken, author of Post Romantic
Published by Red Mountain Press
Risking It is available at Amazon or directly from the author by sending a message on the contact page.
Poems
from Risking It
HOW THE DEAF WOMAN HEARS
The deaf woman hears with heart intuition curiosity.
Conversation is improv.
She hears a word or two thrown out into the room by some unidentifiable voice.
That becomes the nidus focus center
around which a sentence crystallizes in her mind.
This is called fill in the blanks.
This is called hangman’s noose.
The rules are constructed of jello, overcooked spaghetti.
Flexible, open to interpretation and interruption.
The deaf woman invents continuity, acts as if she understands.
This is a ruse sham subterfuge trick wile con.
It is exhausting.
The exhausted deaf woman tries to comprehend
grasp what is said follow the thread of conversation.
She heard this can lead to depression.
RISKING IT
If it’s confidently proclaimed,
a name for this large orange
mushroom glistening in rain
beside a Galiano Island trail,
does that make it safe to eat?
Is it better simply to admire
its vibrant copper flesh,
the way it binds raindrops,
stands alone in a patch
of small ferns and grasses?
Suppose a mycologist quotes
genus and species, shows
drawings in an atlas, will it be
tantalizing enough to take this lush
fungus into the kitchen, sauté it
with shallots, make a risotto?
These are the questions
faced every day: who to trust,
what to eat, how to prepare
for death
What People Are Saying
about Risking It
“There have been a few poetry collections that when I’ve first encountered them I've thought I could read every day for a month. This lavish, lush, skillful, wicked-funny, and wisely pensive first collection by Sylvia Pollack, “a poet in her 80th February,” is one of those books. I have seldom been more impressed with or responded more positively to a first collection.”
— review by Adrian Koesters, author of Three Days with the Long Moon
“Every one of Sylvia Byrne Pollack’s poems found in Risking It is impeccably made, but her inclusion of “Ghazal for Birdseed and Poetry” and the villanelle “Honeyed Days” shows a deep respect for poetic heritage, reaching for a seventh-century Arabic form and a seventeenth-century French form and folding these into a decidedly twenty-first century collection.”
— review by Julie Marie Wade, author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures
“Pollack’s sense of humor is present throughout her collection, often adding unexpected lightness to difficult subjects, making the reader unsure whether to smile or frown, or both. Therein lies the power of Risking It: this book speaks to the multitudes of emotion and experiences that each of us contain.”
— review by Hannah Rousselot, author of Ocean Currents
“Subtle humor mixed with exquisite pathos creates an irresistible voice in Risking It by Sylvia Byrne Pollack. As in the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Pollack observes the world with a quizzical eye and a trained ear…. I finished this collection only to begin reading it again. It’s that good.”
— review by Susan Rich, author of Cloud Pharmacy
“The poet shows herself to be a person of long experience who admits the bad but lightens it with language. A career in science may have helped to produce this attitude, and certainly added to the rich variety of her vocabulary.”
— review by Ellen Roberts Young, author of Lost in the Greenwood
“The poems in Risking It convey resilience and an acceptance of the foibles of life. This book will give hope to readers.”
— review by Mary Ellen Talley, author of Postcards from the Lilac City