Tanya Olson shares masterfully written, thoughtful poetry in her full-length collection Stay (YesYes Books, 2019). Her lyrical lines range from stories unfolding through striking images to staccato phrases presented in dialect that feels of small town America. Entering her poetry makes me feel as though I’m eavesdropping on, or even joining in dialogue with, rural folks in the hard north. And more than that, I enjoyed finding common experiences between myself and the voices within the poems; transported to memories until now forgotten, but spotlit and expanded through Olson’s wonderful sensory details and her ability to capture specifics of time and place.
Olson’s deft artistry in composing lines and stanzas that create story, music, and points of introspection allows the reader to be fully immersed in her poetry. I spent far more hours with Stay than I had planned, but time slipped by fast while in its pages. I felt as though I visited far away states but also visited places in myself where I haven’t been for years. Olson writes sophisticated, intelligent poems that feel anything but highbrow or pretentious. I imagine any reader would find time with Stay well spent, given that the poems can be read on multiple levels. Olson’s poems are easy to read — their flow, the stories that drive them along — but the longer I spend with them, the more I’m drawn in. Olson’s poetry is fun to read but just as rewarding to savor, staring out the window, considering and responding to her rich meanings and themes.
“Nothing Left to Burn Down Here” offers the story of a snowstorm through the experiences of children.
The fifth day the father…
…Zipped coveralls over it all Slid
out the window Down
the drift Dug out that side door
Turned around Tunneled into snow
Made a room Deep enough
to crawl into Tall enough to sit
For you girls To play in Fresh air…
The next stanza, of this five stanza poem, is highlighted on the back cover of Stay.
The girls read books Played TV Show
Charlie’s Angels The one where Kelly
gets shot in the head by the sweet simple boy
Who does not understand what a gun is
Can do How beautiful she looks
in the hospital bed The part
where she wakes up Forgives him
Little House on the Prairie
The one where they tie Pa
to the fence Afraid a raccoon
may have given him rabies
How they do not want
to do it How Pa says It is
what they must do Before sleep
that night the sister asked
Do you think that we could do it
Zipped into sleeping bags
Buried under blankets
Ovened bricks against
their feet Tops of their heads
just touching together
Do you really think we could
Within television references, descriptions of characters and relationships, and details such as oil trucks not able to deliver through a storm and rusted through car floorboards, Olson creates gritty and nostalgic space. Yet while living in these pieces, the reader feels very much in the present. Through all of this — invented dialogues, imagined lives of birds, and snapshots of life, Olson explores themes of memory, childhood, relationships between children and parents, love, death, and longing.
Olson’s poetry is musical and she frequently references and quotes music throughout her collection. She also includes one of the most beautiful tributes to Whitman that I’ve read in “o camerado close! o you and me at last.”
…Walt himself came to Washington
after reading in the paper his brother
had been shot at Fredericksburg he stared
into wounded face after wounded face
until George was finally the one looking back
when George got better and returned to war
Walt stayed to help other hurt boys
sat with them sang to them
wrote their letters home in one
he called grass the beautiful uncut
hair of graves can you imagine
writing such a thing Mr President
can you imagine being the mother
to read it…
…writing is how he realized
every last molecule of every dead being
still lives in existence somewhere
that every face he ever saw
he would see in some other face again…
Olson begins her collection with “Zeno’s Boat,” exploring children leaving their mothers. “...Mother’s hearts hold their young / the way young boys hold birds By a string / kept in hand With a string looped in knot // And children never forget the holding…” This is one thing that Olson’s poems accomplish: creating strong atmosphere to be lived in on an experiential level, while also providing powerful points of reflection.
One of my favorite poems from Stay is “Amo Amas Amat Amamus” in which the speaker proposes
...the secret to love is Your craziness
can’t make the other person crazy You are never
going to not be crazy So you need to work on finding somebody
who when everyone else thinks Lord that girl
is crazy will put her arm around your shoulder
and whisper in your ear Don’t worry baby
I think you’re fine Just fine
Within ten stanzas, Olson skillfully employs repetition of lines and endearing, sometimes humorous quotes, highlighting touching incidents of “crazy” through wistful and sweet stories, until arriving at this final quote in which the reader thinks, Yes, this is as good a description of love as I’ve ever read.
Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and is a Senior Lecturer in English at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Her first book, Boyishly, was awarded a 2014 American Book Award and her second book, Stay, was released from YesYes Books in 2019. She was a Discovery Poetry Contest winner from Boston Review and the 92nd Street Y and is a Lamda Fellow of the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices.
Find the book here: https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/stay-by-tanya-olson
