Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights by Belinda Subraman Reviewed by Erin McKnight ISBN: 978-0-9822934-0-9
As a former hospice nurse who returned home to care for her dying father, Belinda Subraman knows death. Yet, Blue Rooms, Black Holes, White Lights doesn’t serve to explicate the process of dying or glean insight from its impact; instead, and arguably of far greater significance, Subraman’s collection is “studying our fears.” The poet’s reliable presence and straightforward language offer insight into mortality—“Death is not a visitor/ but an absence”—yet what is lacking in the collection’s 31 poems is what best shapes them. For, while foregoing sentimentality, authoritativeness, and an overwrought style, Subraman instills in the reader the sentiment that although death may never be reconciled, its omnipresence demands pragmatic attention and contemplation. In “Aging,” perspective is explored as an element that is only “seen/ from a distance, looking back,” yet, the poet also proves that her seminal intent to confront death doesn’t mean other metaphoric avenues offering a sense of comfort or hope should be discounted, as, “It would be nice to be/ philosophical about it all.” It is perhaps within this dualistic approach to loss, as both nurse and daughter, that Subraman is best able to convey her meditative, yet grounded style; she may indeed appreciate better than most people that “Nothing can be said that is news,” but she continues to make every effort to engage the reader in conversation. No baby talk. No doom and gloom. Subraman’s bedside manner expresses sympathy without pity—for her reader, or herself. Yet, the poet is unafraid to explore how death has robbed her; in “Issues, Colors,” Subraman confronts the painful, personal toll of helping her father die:
This denying of denial is furthered in her work with people like Paul, who “in his last act of defiance/bravery/repentance” refuses pain medication. Although Subraman’s “hands are tied” and her patient’s ashes will eventually slip through her fingers, the reader perceives the pervasiveness of the aptly titled “Wayward Wind” that acts upon both the life carried off, and the one left behind. And Subraman understands well the motion of death and what it means for life to move “inward/ as it disappears.” Whether within the deceased body or the loved one who remains as an animated shell, the ordinary texture of life is woven beneath the collection’s gossamer overlay: from the “pickled body in a box,” to the arbitrary items lining bookshelves, death acts upon tangible, solid things of matter that do matter, even if only for a limited duration. But Subraman also respects the human need to make sense of death, to find hope in its ubiquity:
This urge to look outside ourselves, upward, is suggestive of the poet’s innate understanding that “All is what it is.” In approaching death with our fears pinned to our sleeves, Subraman discovers it is our fleeting mortality that focuses attention on life. This exercise’s affirmation, however, is expectantly tempered by a difficult lesson Subraman has mastered: “One thing I learned is/ what I flee will snag me.” Indeed, nothing regarding the inescapable force of death may be said that constitutes news, but it doesn’t mean nothing should be said. Subraman clearly understands that the reader needs to hear these sad, lovely truths.
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Erin McKnight is a Scottish writer now living in Dallas, and is Fiction Editor for Prick of the Spindle. Her writing has been widely published online and in print, in venues including flashquake, Ginosko Literary Journal, and PRECIPICe. Her short nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in W.W. Norton’s The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3. Erin holds an MFA in creative writing with a specialization in fiction, and is currently at work on an MA in literary linguistics.
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