SOME HOLY WEIGHT IN THE VILLAGE AIR

Small town poems with a somber air of resignation.

Known in the New York metro area for his work as a television and radio reporter, Fisher also teaches poetry at the University of Connecticut in Stamford. Here, he presents his first full collection of poems, a follow-up to the chapbook Remembering Rew (2004). With careful attention to meter and reverence for the natural world, Fisher will remind readers of Robert Frost, as he highlights village eccentricities and the bland inevitability of life, as well as the beauty of trees, wind and other seasonal phenomena. While most of the poems depict tender scenes, the more captivating selections focus on not necessarily momentous but still intimate moments between individuals. In “Mystery,” one of the volume’s lighter pieces, the speaker overhears a surprising interaction at a diner, as one waitress grabs the attention of another and “…whispers through her lipstick: / Don’t push the minestrone. […] The blonde nods / as if she’d just confirmed / a raw rumor about the wife / of that fellow in the bow tie / over at the post office. / She clumps away, / cradling four plates of burgers. / I look down into my soup. / Something’s up with the minestrone.” In the darker “Snow Walk,” a boy takes his younger brother “instead of his gun” for a midnight walk in the woods. Here, the poet likens the forbidding mystery of the winter forest to the young boy’s only being allowed a glimpse of his brother, who is “ten years older and never smiles.” A leaden sort of “weight in the air” hangs over all of these poems, many of which are strewn with images of crumbs, sending a message of decay and submission to the unwelcome onset of death.

Thoughtful and hushed imagistic works.