Author Cheryl Pallant and her latest collection of poetry (Photo courtesy Cheryl Pallant, image courtesy BlazeVOX)
Words are not ideas — they help express ideas. Remove the rules, and ideas soar. Remove the rules, and words dance. Cheryl Pallant’s poetry draws power from words freed to break, bend and redefine the rules. From her background in dance and contact improvisation and studies in Buddhism and structuralism, the lines of her poetry and prose merrily engage, poke and provoke. You can get a sense of that with her latest collection, “Light at the End of the Word” from BlazeVOX books. On Saturday, Feb. 17, from 10 a.m. to noon, she’ll be sharing her verses at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Best Cafe.
Within the poem “Not Quite a Secret” appears the line “I don’t expect you to believe in magic but urge dwelling in possibilities and secrets.” This is one of the keys to how a reader may take in the work — or perhaps any work — to allow oneself a bit of free association. Openness and awareness are what Pallant’s poems are advising.
We’re familiar with such coaching from other guides. These days, giving oneself over to pure experience can be a challenge, not to mention hazardous on occasion.
“There’s open, and then there’s stupid,” Pallant says matter-of-factly, with a laugh. “You can be open but grounded — you need to be grounded. If you’re not grounded, you’re letting everything push you around.”
This mindset requires a delicate balance.
“It’s not like you can be totally still or totally moving; you’re always responding to the situation,” she says. “You have to be alert to what’s going on at this moment.”
Image courtesy Bear & Company
The poetry is itself, or what you allow it to be, but a significant portion of the framework behind the lines is her recent philosophical book, “Ecosomatics: Embodiment Practices for a World in Search of Healing” from Bear & Company.
Sounds heavy, but Pallant’s sense of poetry is invested with the prose and driven with an urgency.
“The book is motivated because of the climate crisis,” she says of “Ecosomatics.” And it’s not only about what’s happening in nature, but inside of us, too. “Part of the reason for the breakdown we’re going through is because we are out of touch with the environment around us. We think ‘the environment’ is out there, but it’s also right here: We are nature, trees are nature. It’s all connected.”
To put it another way, in her poem “What’s Okay,” it reads, “Things fall apart when they don’t congeal.”
Pallant’s words play, and they can provide laughter, or, they can sneak up on you and provide a reason to look up and out and in.
