“Review of DeWitt Henry’s Trim Reckonings” by Elizabeth Gauffreau

I found DeWitt Henry’s latest poetry collection, Trim Reckonings, a pleasure to read and an even greater pleasure to reread and reflect upon. The voice is personal and engaging, the insights subtle and nuanced, the humor never mean-spirited.  

I particularly enjoyed how varied the subjects are, from family mementoes (“Gas Mask”) to witnessing the birth of a child (“Girl in a Hairy Paw”) to a twentieth-first century version of Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse” (“Rabbit”). At the same time, the collection is well-unified and -curated, with an even ebb and flow from one section to the next and from poem to poem. 

The common thread that runs throughout the collection is the question of authenticity and permanence in today’s politically and digitally tumultuous world: defining authenticity, recognizing it in others, achieving it for ourselves.  

In the prose poem “The Real Thing,” for example, the speaker of the poem raises questions of authenticity and permanence through word play. As the speaker gazes upon an empty Coke bottle on his kitchen table, he waxes poetic, to the point of echoing Hamlet’s poor Yorkick speech: 

“Alas, poor Coke! Quite empty? Where be your syrups now? Your sugars? Where your caffeine? Melancholy Coke, the lips have vanished that have known you.” (p. 24)

The irony of the poem is, of course, that “the real thing” wasn’t authentic at all. It was a marketing slogan to sell a product with no nutritional value.

Word play is used to good effect throughout the collection, with a number of the poems arriving at their insights through word-riffing. These poems highlight the many definitions and connotations that can be associated with a particular word and the questions these associations raise. “On Heart,” serves as a primary example when it asks,  “Meaning too much, can ‘heart’ mean anything at all?” (p. 18) This poem also mentions the “Heart vs. Head” dichotomy, the constant interplay between the lyrical and the cerebral, which characterizes how I experienced the ebb and flow of the collection as I read it.

There is a strong current of social commentary running through the collection, which never crosses the line into polemic. A prime example is “Heads Up,” some of the most incisive social commentary on our current moment in time I’ve read. Without stridence or bombast, it asks the reader to consider the most fundamental question facing the United States, if not the world: “Head vs. heart vs. belly / which rules the body politic?” (p. 19) 

The two standout poems in the collection for me both deal with the physical world, the here and now in all its beauty and impermanence. “Andrew Wyeth” describes a riverside scene encountered on a neighborhood walk:

“. . . how midday sun struck a lower casement 

on the far building, which reflected its image,
distinct as a photograph, bright on
the dark spill, foam and rush . . . 
…………………………………………….
One more canvas Andrew Wyeth failed
to capture, paint, and frame.” (p. 95)

“The Singer” also takes place on a neighborhood walk, where the poem’s speaker hears a woman singing in a voice “perfectly modulated and pitched.” (p. 99) The following week, he stops the woman to compliment her singing, and he never hears it again. 

In addition to its emotional depth, Trim Reckonings is a poetic of questions. The struggle to understand what it means to be human begins with asking the fundamental questions. As Trim Reckonings so ably demonstrates, sometimes these questions can only be arrived at through poetry.

Copyright © 2024 Elizabeth Gauffreau. All Rights Reserved

Elizabeth Gauffreau

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story “Henrietta’s Saving Grace” was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg  prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press. She has published a novel, Telling Sonny, and a collection of photopoetry, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance. She is currently working on a novel, The Weight of Snow and Regret, based on the closing of the last poor farm in Vermont in 1968.

Liz’s professional background is in nontraditional higher education, including academic advising, classroom and online teaching, curriculum development, and program administration. She received the Granite State College Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018.

Find Liz online at https://lizgauffreau.com.

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