Spring Up Everlasting by William Woolfitt
Mercer University Press, 2020
The poems in William Woolfitt’s Spring Up Everlasting are a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the beauty and bounty of the given world. Many poems show that even with hard times, brokenness, and ruin, the natural world can connect us with the Divine impulse. And where people or creatures are hobbled or endangered, it’s possible to tap into the wellspring of the spirit and find hope or solace.
The language in the poems is fascinating—precise and unique—widening the reader’s view of life. An ambitious young man is “joe-pye-weed, / itching to grow.” At “Camp Meeting in a Grove of Sycamore Trees,” he “floats among fireflies,” as “the spirit reels him up.” Other congregants “weave with the frenzy / of honeybees smoked from the hive.” Such transformation and renewal is portrayed in many poems. In one, the preacher, who is broken in body, “draws / the tank-air through his oxygen hose / and rubber mask.” Yet even this man, whose “words are honeycomb,” is given breath from the spirit.
In several poems, readers will find an abundance of life, ironically, amid environmental destruction. The opening poem, “Slurry Spill,” presents tragedy as “three hundred / million gallons, thick as pitch, a dark / dirty slop of mud, mercury, arsenic” flash-floods the town of Inez, Kentucky. Even so, the residents, while circumspect, show that they’re full of life and can still banter: “The thickest chocolate shake, people say. And “Around here, you don’t / have to be Jesus to walk on water.” Elsewhere, the metaphor and imagery also bring readers into the world the poems inhabit, with “water that gnaws stone,” “nights of swelter, / mosquito drone.”
The motif of cleansing is often woven into the poems. “Mary of Bethany,” recalls the washing of Jesus’ feet from Mary’s point of view. She wetted “his burnished feet” with her tears, and wiped them “with the fall // of her hair,” unaware of the importance of this moment, unsure of “the convulsing of the temple / that was to come.” This, and other instances of cleansing in the poems, are meant to show intimacy, and the role of love, humility, and service in offering healing during times of strife and destruction.
In four self-portraits, we see the poet’s kinship with the natural world, to lost ancestors, to the people who survive because of what the world provides. Of the “homeplace” that has fallen to ruin, he laments that it’s become “a map of a country drifting from memory.” One of the final poems situates the speaker worshiping with the congregation of a small church. These are people who have loved the land and the spirit that he loves, “them a part / of me, they are me now.” Everywhere in the poems are possibilities for communion, connection, hope, and renewal. These themes give an impressive richness to Spring Up Everlasting.
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Rebecca A. Spears, a poet and essayist, is author of Brook the Divide (Unsolicited Press, 2020) and The Bright Obvious (Finishing Line Press, 2009). Her poems, essays, and reviews can be found in TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, Calyx, Verse Daily, Barrow Street, Birmingham Poetry Review, Relief, Image, and other journals and anthologies.