Faith, Hope, Love—and More:
Review of Now These Three Remain
by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Reviewed by Jayne E. Marek

With a delicate touch, Sarah Dickenson Snyder explores nuances in the ways we understand self and family, self and history, self and myth. This new collection brings together 54 poems weighing the roles of female figures in delightful variety: Eve, for example, complaining, assessing her connections to animals, judiciously considering Adam and the limitations on what one can know about another person. Other poems in this book probe into the legacy of Penelope and The Odyssey, fear of flying or highway accidents, an unwelcome childhood kiss, and recent personal and historical events. Snyder’s attention to the mechanisms of memory follows small but significant details, offering a contemplative characterization of a woman’s self-awareness.

The book’s divisions loosely address the qualities referenced from First Corinthians—although from a skeptical, somewhat oppositional stance. “Un/Faith,” the first section, often grounds its poems in questions about received beliefs. Snyder has a deft touch, never overstating her ideas. “To Follow Undisciplined Ink or Having Many Things to Carry” (p. 17), for instance, begins with a list of innocuous “things to save,” such as cardboard, fabric, words, then slips in a more solemn note as her four-year-old says, “I don’t want to die alone.” This leads the poem into its closing meditations on death versus connectedness:

each kernel
of corn is attached to a thread of silk
under the husk. Maybe the end
will be like diving into a channel
with a shore on the other side
that we don’t know is reachable….

At other times the voice speaks more directly: “The earth heals itself and so do we” (“To See the Healing,” p. 18). And “Maine Coast” (p. 22) deals with the human urge to wonder whether some minor action could have changed a fatal happenstance: “what if / we knew the second of our leaving, / could stop ourselves / from diving in” an otherwise normal moment (in this case, a casual swimmer drowns). Yet the book’s speculations also acknowledge minor miracles, as with “In the Butterfly Pavilion” (p. 13) that finds the ability to hope conveyed through the insects’ transformation.

“Un/Hope,” section two, suggests that recent events have seriously damaged our collective aspirations for a better world. Snyder sometimes uses palimpsest to tie the past to contemporary events such as September 11, the 2020 inauguration, the pandemic. “Entering The Odyssey” likens Penelope’s long wait for Odysseus to a child’s anticipation of snapping a wishbone: “will we ever get what we want? / Maybe all hope is an old beggar” (p. 27). A son’s love of fossils takes on multiple layers in “We Were Here,” as the speaker ponders dinosaurs, the rapid passing of childhood, and the fragility of humanity: “Name the names. / Hold the bones. I promise / we were here” (p. 42). Other poems have more elliptical glimpses of the section’s theme; details of global travel—giving fruit to monks, watching lions devour a giraffe, visiting the site of an atrocity—lead the speaker to balance hope with despair: “Even in my tears / there is inhale / and exhale. / We are always / rising and falling,” notes “That’s What It Is” (p. 37).

The third set of poems, “Un/Love,” ponders rejection and sex, discreetly but firmly evoking the speaker’s youthful lovemaking, “bad boys,” an abortion, and finally images of a kind, beloved husband. The last pieces in this collection lean toward relief and praise. Love, despite plenty of roadblocks, has at last arrived, and not just in the sense of romantic fulfillment. “God” is a poem that delicately avoids the question of a particular deity, instead finding grace in rapport with a stranger that reminds the speaker of other types of love: “how impossible and luminous / over decades, an invisible fire” (p. 55).

The delicacy of these poems is nicely echoed in this book’s cover that depicts three birds: two watch as one displays an insect in its beak, its head lifted. One senses the value of attentive waiting, followed by fulfillment—providing satisfaction for the reader who accompanies Snyder’s poetry in its thoughtful journey.

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 1.

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