"The Long Game," A review by Barbara Quick

The Long Game: Poems Selected & New by Grace Cavalieri
(2023: The Word Works, Washington, D.C., $28)
Review by Barbara Quick

Literary fairy godmother to countless grateful writers, the indefatigable nonagenarian poet, playwright and podcast host Grace Cavalieri is celebrating the publication of her 27th book of poems. Only recently retired from an extra-long and energetic term as Maryland’s 10th Poet Laureate, Cavalieri has all the while carried on as host and founder of the legendary interview program broadcast from the Library of Congress, “The Poet and the Poem,” now in its 41st year. I’d wager there isn’t a poet in America now who wouldn’t just love to be a guest on the program, if he or she hasn’t been featured on it already.

Don’t take my word for it, though. “I adore Grace, and have been proud to call her a friend for more than 20 years,” vouches the much-beloved poet of unfussy and ordinary things, George Bilgere, whose newest knockout collection, Cheap Motels of My Youth,  just snagged the 2023 Rattle Chapbook Prize. “When I think of the people who have been kindest and most generous to me in my career, and have done the most to beat the drum for contemporary American poets and poetry, three names come to mind: Billy Collins, Garrison Keillor—and Grace Cavalieri. I can think of few experiences that are more rewarding and fulfilling than sitting down behind the microphone to be interviewed by Grace on her marvelous radio broadcast, The Poet and the Poem. I am so grateful to have her as a friend.”

And we are grateful, both as poets and readers, to follow the soft light of
Cavalieri’s magic wand on the poems in her latest collection:

Taking my cue
from the dead
tree limb
outside
with three live leaves

she writes in the short, perfect poem, “Among the Persimmons,”

I feel happiness.

Writing about her father’s death in “Moderation,” she manages to alchemize the
tenderness of childhood with the ineluctable argument of eternity:

I feel that last moment
as a loud sound written
beneath his life [...]
his heart sounding like a
whistle, blasting high and clear,
a ship just docking from Italy
or a train
at the crossing

This is a poet who knows about love in all its depth, desperation and absurdity,
disarming in the clarity of her gaze and her knowledge of her own healing
powers. In “1952,” she evokes the memory of her husband, a Navy pilot,

Before exile to Viet Nam
Before your children surrounded you like stars
Waiting for your kiss
Before the autumn of our lives
Before there would be no autumns
Before I said don’t fly away.

“There are few poets who have the gravitas both to write poetry and to amplify the voices of other poets with an equal fervor of grace and grit,” writes poet Sandy Yannone, co-founder and host of Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry, an international reading series/Facebook group and author of the luminous new collection, The Glass Studio (Salmon Poetry). “Grace Cavalieri is a once-in-a-generation blazing comet.”

Through the huge and diverse cast of poets whose work she has celebrated or launched, Grace Cavalieri reminds us that poetry is, first and foremost, a spoken art form. The audio archives of her podcast—which were part of the cultural time capsule launched last year on the Lunar Codex—provide a perfect introduction to American poetry as well as the perfect rest-stop for any poet already on the beautiful, crazy journey of a life made of gut-wrenching, soul-illuminating, redemptive words.

My favorite poem in The Long Game, “Work Is My Secret Lover,” is one that we can hear read to great effect by Amanda Holmes of the American Scholar or by Cavalieri herself:

“I am guilty as charged
for nothing else could buy my feelings
and why would I sell the only thing that ever loved me the way
I loved back
but my beautiful, long-lasting
faithful lover my friend who will never leave.

---

Award-winning poet and widely translated novelist Barbara Quick has recently relocated from California to Connecticut. Read more at www.BarbaraQuick.com.