billyjepma's review
hopeful
reflective
4.25
"I think of God, how he lets the universe go,
the oceans breaking down the land,
stars wheeling toward the dangerous rim.
I wonder if he trusts it, the whole
savage, delicately rigged-up thing."
There's something remarkable about Walker's poetry. It doesn't always connect with me, and there were sections of poems here that feel more meandering than insightful. But then something––maybe a line, or a couple of lines, or an entire section's worth of lines––changes, and I find myself floored by a discovery I didn't know I was looking for. So much of Walker's work is steeped in thoughtfulness and exhibits a sharp, open-handed attentiveness to the world she occupies. Her meditations on faith are especially impactful, as she tenderly balances despair at the unknowable aspects of the universe and its potential creator with fierce, deep-rooted hopefulness.
I was lucky enough to have taken a poetry course under Walker as an undergraduate student, and reading her poetry now, years later, took me back to the classroom where she taught us to be patient and attentive to the spaces we exist in. I'm grateful to have a book like Helping the Morning on my shelf to remind me of that lesson, because God knows I need it.
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