Review
Original Review Date: 8/9/1995
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Title: Crazy for Living
Author: Linda Sillitoe
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Poetry
Year Published: 1993
Number of Pages: 227
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 13: 978-1-56085-037-3
ISBN: 10: 1-56085-037-X
Status: Online
Reviewed by Danielle Dubrasky for the Association for Mormon Letters
Review date: 8/9/1995
Main Theme
Sillitoe contrasts images of renewal and calm admist images of violence and desctruction with an overall sense of enduring hope.
Crazy for Living as the title implies expresses a passion for life — the contrasts of winter the enduring spring — but also delves into the madness of chaotic random events that are usually the result of human violence. It is the contrast of violence amidst calm or vice versa that creates a tension in many of Sillitoe’s poems. Sillitoe explores this contrast in the natural world as well as the civilized one. There are occasional references to the Mormon culture but the poems should appeal to a much broader audience because of their universal themes.
The book is thematically divided into three sections: Jouralist Journeys in Tandem and Journeys Between. The first section refers to Sillitoe’s work as a journalist in Salt Lake City. The poems contain both personal and public themes. “During Recess” in particular combines nostalgia for the innocence of childhood with an understanding of the violence so present in contemporary society. In describing a visit to a neighborhood that has changed since her childhood Sillitoe contrasts the simplicity of that childhood world against the confusion of her current world in which she is covering a murder case. In these poems Sillitoe reveals a disturbing side of society that exists beneath its stable veneer.
The second section contains more personal poems many of which deal with family members and loved ones. “Missing Persons” is an unsentimental elegy for the irretrievable childhood of Sillitoe’s own children while “Home From the North” is a sensuous poem expressing the beauties of nature and the laziness of winter love-making: “the close crooked branches interweave/cross and weave/again outside the window love /cross and weave/a basket rising softly an intricate/slow enfolding.”
The final section contains an interesting collection of poems influenced by Navajo beliefs and myths. As a result this section is the most introspective and surreal.
My only criticism is that two poems are written about events that had a profound effect on the Mormon community yet the actual events are barely alluded to in the poems. I am referring to “Killer” and “November’s End 1979.” The former was written as a result of the Mark Hoffman trials. However one would have to know that Sillitoe wrote about those trials as a reporter to know that the killer is actually Mark Hoffman. Because his forgeries murders and trial brought to light a seamier side of Mormonism I would have been interested to see stronger allusions to Hoffman in the poem. “November’s End 1979” was first published in -From Housewife to Heretic- by Sonia Johnson. This information gives us insight to the “church and politics” mentioned in the poem. But again I found myself wanting more of a sense of Johnson to give the poem a stronger political edge. However I say these biases realizing that Sillitoe wished to create a subtler more personal effect by keeping infamy and celebrity out of these poems.
In conclusion these poems create through a simplicity of language images that define a world that is complex yet encircled by hope and endurance. One of the most poignant poems is “For my sister near armistace” that expresses a mother’s fight to save her young daughter from cancer. Here the image of returning spring is a painful reminder of human mortality:
Outside her hospital window, spring gains force,
spurting dandelions through bricks and boards,
loading birds in trees as pollen swirls the skies.
In all that life where’s one for her to live?
After the child has died the last two lines resonate with Christian symbolism:
Now trust each cup you lift to soothe like rainfall,
for bending toward her you are rimmed with light.
I interpret the cup as both the bitter cup of Christ and a sacrament cup. This line expresses a way to be healed through an acceptance of one’s suffering and a hope of redemption. The last line gives ultimate redemption to both the mother and the daughter.