Review
Bleeding Yellow Light by Heather Bartlett
Yes Press, 2009
Reviewed by Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom
Heather Bartlett's 17-poem chapbook, first of all, has the advantage of a great cover. It catches the eye immediately through the pairing of the title's apparent tension between the visceral and ethereal with an image by Stephen A. Parry that captures that tension visually.
"Touching Him," the poem that includes the compelling title phrase, is one of the collection's most elegant in its economy, ending with "wrinkled against the sheets. The door/ is still slightly open/ bleeding yellow light/ onto our faces –"
Bartlett's reliance on economy is important as she ventures into the sort of confessional territory where things can easily get out of hand. Her narrators speak in frank, authoritative voices, but this bold tone is fortunately grounded in convincing details. For instance, the collection's second poem, "Dear Reader" begins:
Let me be the one who tells you first – You will not be saved. When you fell from the bed, broken and heavy, you saw yourself here. You heard someone else's heart beating and reached for it. You can feel it now, can't you? The smooth, cold of a bottle in your palm. Your name scratched on paper
This definitive authorial voice telling the reader they will not be saved could be compared to the tormenting voice in the head of Andrea Yates, who figures in three of these poems, often as a passive figure.
The second of the three Andrea Yates poems closes with:
I am still waiting for my husband to come home, touch my hair. Quiet baby he'll say and reach for me. He'll carry the bodies away, swollen with bath water, place them on clean bath towels. quiet.
Other poems deal with personal grief and anguish – loss, sexual trauma and suicide (two are entitled "Suicide Poem," which may be too many for some readers, given how overused a title like that is by writing-as-therapy poets lacking Bartlett's sense of craft) – all themes that have been explored by poets in many different ways, but, at her best, Bartlett distinguishes her treatment of the subject matter with an instinct for and respect for the silence in the poems and a sharp observational stance.
She misses the mark occasionally, but at her best, her diction is taut, and the reader feels the tension.
"4 O'Clock" ends with:
There will be sleep. There will be a moment when you'll want it back. There will be blood when you get home. Open the door.
Heather Bartlett received her MFA in Poetry from Hunter College and currently teaches creative writing and english literature at Elmira College in upstate New York. Her previous work has been published in RealPoetik and California Quarterly. Her poem “Motherhood,” from Bleeding Yellow Light, appears in the current issue of Melusine.
