Second Opinion

Leatha Kendrick’s Second Opinion (David Roberts Books, 2008) begins with a poem that acknowledges “I still desire what’s gone. What I’m leaving” and ends with a poem titled “What You Leave Me.” Between these bookends the poet explores the equally expansive subjects of loss and joy, often within a single poem.

Covering such ground in a single collection, a lesser poet might come across as unfocused or artificial. In the hands of Kendrick, this expansiveness is seamless, even essential. Kendrick invites the reader into familial relationships and imagery of the home, native landscape, and body in a way that both illuminates and transcends the personal experience.

She shares an acute awareness of the past, the uncertainty of the future, and the mischievous hands of time, but above all she insists on the present. From “Into Flame”:

My body brittle, dry with age,
I break out of sleep aflame,
remember every spring—
they all come down to this one.

One of the most haunting poems for me is “In Passing” with its gritty voice and a face that doesn’t turn away from the harshest realities:

...
I don’t have so much
as a nickel’s worth
of advice to spend on you

or on anyone, now death’s
resident already
in my flesh, insisting

on her solid, if misshapen,
reality. I’ve got to say
only what is necessary,

things like, What a meal
that was! How’s the wife
been feeling? Isn’t this
a gorgeous day?

The poems that play within the boundaries of traditional form and the poems that fall into the category of free verse have a clear and definite sense of form and language. “Threshold,” a double sonnet, takes a fresh look at the mothering of daughters, from when the poet “held my daughters, cradled / like sprays, bouquets extravagant of flowers” to the present day when “Together we wrestle / separate futures, listen for the rustle, / breathing through the line.” Even in these small snippets, Kendrick’s command of sound and delight in word play, characteristic of the collection, shine through.

The poems of Second Opinion are at once heart stopping and heart racing. As is the case with all things of the heart, the poems overflow with love and honesty.