Frank Paino reviews
The Impossible
by Deborah DeNicola

Deborah DeNicola’s, The Impossible (2021 Kelsay) is principally concerned with death and what might come after. But far from being melancholic and/or saccharine, it’s more akin to a celebration of humanity’s insistent yearning to find meaning in the here and now.

Two of the book’s five sections deal with the death of the poet’s parents. 

In the prose poem, “Today,” we watch the writer reach acceptance and understanding of her elderly mother’s slow decline:

                                       …Though my mother has no mind she has no
pain. I think this is because she’s lost her thinking. Though I see the
unity I’m part of, like my mother, I am no one. My own mind jumps
like an orangutan after this thing called fulfillment.—Only my heart
replies, Maybe you have fulfillment when you are nobody.

DeNicola’s father, a surgeon, died as a result of drug addiction when the poet was only fifteen. In the book’s most memorable section, she takes us through a sequence of twenty-one poems, where we travel with him as he acclimates to his afterlife and comes to realize the condemnation he feels comes only from himself.

While refusing to make assertions about the nature of reality, The Impossible does seek to share some of DeNicola’s more “mystical” experiences. Nowhere is this more beautifully (if also paradoxically) expressed than in the closing lines of “Eve of My Evolution:”

Like sky creeps into the throat of a bird
to keep it aloft—I’m pregnant with
what language lost when it took on sound.

This is an accomplished book by a poet whose work is deserving of close attention.

Deborah DeNicola’s most recent book is The Impossible (Kelsay Books). She has two previous poetry collections, Original Human (Wordtech) and Where Divinity Begins (AJB),  two award-winning chapbooks, and a memoir. Deborah compiled and edited Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology. She is a recipient of a NEA Fellowship.

Frank Paino has received a number of awards for his poetry, including a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from The Ohio Arts Council, a Pushcart Prize and The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature. He is the author of three books of poetry. His newest, Obscura, is available from Orison Books. (frankpaino.net)