Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

This is the Red Door by James R. Whitley   
Ironweed Press, 2009. $15.95

Review by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

James R. Whitley's fourth collection, This is the Red Door, examines the nuances of a relationship in the heat of its arrival through its eventual falling apart. (His first book, Immersion, which spans subjects from Billie Holiday to loss, was selected by Lucille Clifton for the 2001 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.)

What makes this book stand out is Whitley's hypersensitivity to longing's qualities, and its representation through figurative language and metaphor. Avoiding the pitfalls of sentimentality, Whitley bases his poems through the vehicle of the world -- the loneliness of the produce aisle at the local market, the vigilance of a pet snake after its partner disappears. Loss and longing exist in the physical realties of the world, as represented here in "If Left Divided":
           
            And beneath my heavy heels,
            a hardy tulip bulb
            doing what all hardy tulip bulbs do:
            persisting it its bulbness while
            waiting for warmth from above,
            perhaps growing impatient with the earth
            packing it into the ground, but
            respecting the rules
            and waiting for the agree-upon cue.

 The reader is keenly aware of the tenor of the poems because of the interspersed narrative poems about rejection and loss, which give weight to moments like this about the tulip bulb:

            But if kept in its present form—
            unengaged, inert—
            the bulb cannot give anything
            more of itself than it has already,
            its germ of a soul wanting to
            offer up to the world
            the bounty of, the beauty of
            shoots, anther, calyx, blossom.

There are moments in Whitley's poems that are breathtakingly simple and yet lyrically powerful; these are moments which stand out as part of Whitley's strengths, such as this poem about falling in love:

            When you first approached,
            I stood perfectly still, barely breathing,
            my long brown arms outstretched
            like hopeful branches, just waiting.
           
                        (" 'Monkey Know What Tree to Climb' ")

He combines this with wisdom about actions in the world that represent some larger meaning, such as the partner's urge to destroy or consume her lover. In "Carnal Knowledge," for example, Whitley recollects the lover's urgent devouring of a mango. Underneath that image is his awareness of the lover's cruelty and her eventual betrayal: "I can still see the ooze of the nectar,/the brazen gloss of it on your lips as/ it dripped from your open mouth . . . as you slaked that maddening craving."

As with most poets, Whitley's strengths in this book are also part of his weaknesses. Some of his descriptions seems too common or mundane, too trivial to encompass such weighty topics as love and loss. This is true of some of the language used, the poems diction too superficial compared to its subject. I am thinking of, for instance, the poem "Jumping Bean" and the speaker's identification of it with victimhood. His description ("As it somersaults and flops/around, the kids jumping themselves,/all the while screeching with glee") seems to light-hearted in tone given the subject matter.