Review: Kathleen Winter
On Cat’s Tongue by Kathleen Winter
by Tyler Truman Julian
Memory is the thread that connects the poems in Kathleen Winter’s probing new chapbook, Cat’s Tongue. Memory runs through poems exploring aging, childhood and inheritance, asking what it is we keep from our ancestors and what we leave for others in our wake. This is sensitive poetry, aware of past, present and future, and both the speaker’s and our collective impact on all three.
It is not easy work to break down our impact on time and the people around us, but Winter’s poetry is more than equipped for the challenge. Unafraid to climb into abstraction, Winter pulls the poetry back to earth and humanizes this short collection through the confessional moment, often embracing humor and the uncanny. She writes,
This is temporary a misunderstanding
between myself and me.
How I came to be caught in my own net,
the red blur of an old girl.
Half-submerged body—craft to carry just one animal.
I pull myself up
by the boot-strap of my braid.
Memory! I send the last dog to greet you
with his one wild eye.
(“Beside Myself”)
This short poem opens the chapbook and captures so much of what the collection is. As if to put a period on this first poem, Winter’s speaker tells us in the next poem, “I’m not thinking of/how time was, but of what the instance felt like,” and of course, this second poem is about a childhood memory of holding a snake and the breakdown of expectation, and of course, this second poem is called “Some days I want certainty, some days, revelation.” Winter’s poems are relatable, even when they wax abstract or personal. The poetics carry them and we can easily see ourselves sitting “on the floor, waiting/for the snake to make the rounds,” wondering what it feels like, only to be surprised at the unexpected, forced to grow up. This could be our childhood memory or a parent’s, told to us at the dinner table. Regardless, we inherit a lesson, just as the speaker does. We learn about expectation and adulthood.
This is it, the crux of the chapbook: What can we learn from memory and its inheritance? And Winter lays this out throughout the collection, building finally to “Call It Like You See It,” an almost response to “Some days I want certainty, some days, revelation.” Her speaker, reflecting on a cold, dreary day, declares,
The Labrador inside his faux fur rug
is Sultan of Dog
and wouldn’t say no to a pastry.
Why rise from bed
when the owl yet sings in the mesquite
and no one has made coffee.
Tomorrow without fail
brings rain, more cold.
The Sultan and his retinue
have each grown up and almost
old. Who knows what song
the owl pronounces now
in oval tones—the fable’s knell,
or an avian solicitation?
Who knows what tomorrow might bring beside the cold? But we can call it as we see it and learn from it as we go. Cat’s Tongue is Kathleen Winter and her speaker’s opportunity to call it as they see it and sits as a challenge to us to evaluate our memories and how they impact our lives and those around us.