Summary:
Jean Sands' second full-length poetry collection, "Close
But Not Touching," was published a few months after her death in October,
2016. Sands had been working on this volume
for more than a year, a process slowed by debilitating illness. This collection, like her first book,
"Gandy Dancing," is autobiographical, raw, plainly written, and
powerful. Both books deal with sexual
abuse, marital abuse, dysfunctional family dynamics, divorce, poverty, and a
woman's struggle to survive. And in
Sands' case, to write about that survival.
The 47 poems in "Close But Not Touching" are
divided into four sections. The first
examines Sands' childhood. Her mother,
born in Hungary, as a child terrified of German soldiers, is failing. In the book's opening poem, "When Mother
Stopped Remembering," Sands introduces her themes of human rights, sexual
and physical abuses, and the need to speak out against them. The poem closes with Sands' mother forgetting
words, growing silent, and giving up books.
"In Germany, they emptied the shelves, / burned the books, the men, the women, the
children." (pp 4-5). Sands' response
to the loss of words, of power, is her poetry.
In "Becoming Helen" (pp 7-9), Sands pays tribute to
an older woman writer who became a mentor. "Forty years later the keyboard
clicks under my fingers, / unseen hands hover above mine." The specter of
sexual abuse is raised in "The Peach Farmer's Daughter" (p 15). Abused by her father, even after his death the
daughter can't forget "his liquor breath, his fingers inside." In other
poems in this section, Sands addresses aggression ("Pigs" p 16), loss
of innocence ("Plum" p 17), humiliation ("The Music Lesson"
p 18), and desire ("Danbury Fair" p 19).
The second section takes a loving and yet brutally forthright
look at Sands' four sons and how her marriages and divorces affected them. She doesn't spare herself--her poor choices--or
the sons' fathers. Especially strong
poems include "Night Sounds," "Suicide,"
"Swimmer," "The Policeman Is Your Friend," and "Father
Poem" (pp 26-30).
The poems in section three chronicle the author's divorce
from her abusive second husband, specifically, but also her hard-to-shake feelings
of entrapment and helplessness in the face first of childhood sexual abuse and
then of marital physical abuse. In
"Car Ride" she writes "I can't do this anymore, // I can't do
this, // I can't" (pp 38-39). Forced
from her home by police pounding at her door in the dark, she writes "You
set me up / ex-husband with greed on your mind. / Money hungry at anybody's
expense but your own" (p 40). Divorce
leads to poverty for the author.
"Divorce Settlement," "Working in a Discount Store after
the Divorce," and "Saving the
Universe" will ring true for many who must struggle for subsistence from
day to day (pp 46-48).
Section Four brings this collection full circle, offering
hope and resolution. The author has met
another man, a good man. In poems such
as "Rain" (p 60) and "As Evening Comes" (p 64) there is a
softening, a willingness to open to this new life and new love. In perhaps the most moving poem in the
collection, "At the Vet's Office" (p 65-66), Sands looks back at her
marriages ("The first one was a hitter-- / open palms, threatening fists .
. . The second one, worse. A handsome
man / with no past. I should have known
/ his clamming up was covering up") and compares her past with her
present: "I am overwhelmed with gratitude / for the sweet man who will
pick up the cat / and pay the bill without a word" (p 66). This
"sweet man" was married to Sands for more than 25 years, became her
writing partner, a father to her four sons, and served as her caretaker through
many years of her illness.
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