Shaking Hands with the Night
by Katerina Fretwell
London: Pendas Productions, 2006
ISBN 0-9208205-4-9
122 pp., C$22.00 paper.

Katerina Fretwell has produced a dramatic, hard-hitting, honest autobiographical poetry collection. The first section in the book is the shortest and most frightening: Dark House describes the curse of her family, alcoholism. Here she uses internal rhyme to good effect, as in "Whisky Breath": "Near the souses and fallen spouse" and "Highballs' changeling". As a child growing up in New York , she sees that "alcohol preys like hulking wings". In another poem, "Ancient Mariner Redux", Fretwell mentions another addiction she overcame in 1992, smoking. She chants: "Thumbflick Bic, flame to tip,/ I smoke ‘em out" and "another butt bends on its ash. " In "No, Not My Father", she shows how much her father's early death disturbed her, "gored me through cribslats. " "To My Family's Killer" describes the horror of cancer which took so many in her family, by addressing cancer directly: "You glutton, craving/ food many times your size" and "loving the ride in her blood". In the final section, House of Healing, the poem "Reclamation" explains how the family curse of alcoholism and cancer conspired, "leaving even the good/times sunk below recall. "

On Tap, the longest section in the book, vividly portrays the painful progression of alcohol dependence in the author's family, as in the poem "Drinking Buddies" where "Grainy amber & bloodred claret/ swirl three ladies/ down the vortex. . . [in an] exec-on-the-rise/ enclave/ every 4 pm. " In "Nutcracker" she expertly depicts the pain of Christmases: "that brisket & booze patchwork robe" and "visions of sanity flow" which parodies the beloved poem "T'was the Night Before Christmas" and the popular ballet, The Nutcracker Suite. In " Wells College ­ No One", Fretwell reveals her loneliness and reclusiveness after the deaths of her mother and uncle: "Vending machines save me/ from dining solo and silent/ among grouped gaiety. " "Wedding's Dark Knight" presages the demise of her first marriage. Clashing with the noble, knightly imagery is reality: "His ice-hot remarks. . . / leak pure acid. . . simmer in lye." "Power Struggles" heightens the alcohol-induced widening marital rift: "He crosses the border/ to stock up during a strike: a case/ to Scotch his dwindling [law] practice. "

Still in On Tap, Fretwell portrays the heartbreaking decline in her morale in "Madness": "I stare down the medicine cabinet/ and swallow it whole" and "I loll on the bilious-coloured couch. " She starkly reveals the pain of having others note her condition in "Writer's Workshop": "puking poems" and "a clean-cut navy guy/ slides his eyes over you/ each gaze a slap". The author tells of her prematurely self-sufficient daughter's suffering: "barely six, your house of cards/ tumbles. . . Daddy gone and Mom a goner" in "Trumped by the Lady Drunk". "Unconditional" provides a wonderful image in contrast to the disdain and despair of other poems: "[she] worships the cleaning woman/ who sets her up, hugs her and her spewed memoir. " The writer makes her triumphal choice in "Pilgrim" where the images are fast and decisive. We hear that beer fizz down the drain: "I grab that damn cesspool siux-pack/ and slop it down the drain. . . hug my unmothered daughter. "

Fretwell describes her sense of liberation: In The Gift, "Storefronts stop slinging/ back a slouching body/ held captive/ to a bottle's lowered water mark. " In "Convivial Oblivion" flanked by real friends and family, not drinking buddies, she recalls: "I smell my past Obsession" and "Out of the tap/ reminders froth: heady days, horrid/ years. "

"Quartzite Dialogues", brief modified ghazals and linked haikus, Section Three, have been set to music and performed at festivals.

These little gems, written in Parry Sound between 1982 and 1996, beautifully show the author newly aware of the landscape around her.

In Section Four, Brides Gate Meditations, the poems celebrating birthdays and anniversaries show her comfort with herself and her life. "A Woman stands" provides this picture: "bifocals bifurcating twilight" and "beyond/ fuss and gush, both/ ex-drunks well seasoned". "Forget-Me-Not" explains "a second/hand bride/in peach or coral doesn't primp. "In "A Man Stands" she states her loving earthy prayer that "always the coil stays in his step/ and me his foil, jolt for his lips. "

The final section, House of Healing Light, portrays the process she must undergo to be healed of past hatred. The material is emotionally charged. "Dragon breath" states: "crying for salve not salvos/ poured on reopened/ childhood wounds/ we're goaded by coaches. " She discovers: "mother. How we burned/ to be her beloved. Father's too. " When the students wrote to their parents, they discovered, "they [parents] too braved the dragon breath/ weeping fire, oh, just to be loved. "In "Finally the Funeral (To my father)", Fretwell dignifies "the grief/ family forbade me to express, ever" and in "Self Love" explains the authenticity of her self-discovery: "spinning inside me, the self same/ words blanched of meaning . . . in hundreds of how-to/ presto whole-person formulae" how she felt self love in every cell of her being.

Successive poems use space imagery, the central image of shaking hands with the night. In the award-winning "Polestar", she poignantly addresses her long-dead mother: "My terror inflated you. / into a galaxy staring me down. . . Now I see your spotlight/ newly angled as love. "Fretwell also addresses Henry Vaughan, the Welsh mystic poet also her ancestor, in a poem titled in one of his lines: "And Yet, As Angels": "the black-holed voice/ of family dead far too young" is blessed with humour in the image of Gabriel luging down a moonbeam. In the eponymous "Shaking Hands with the Night", she movingly describes the harvest moon as "a platinum chalice/ The Big Dipper pours/ not gin, but a salve".

Fretwell's work would greatly support anyone struggling with addiction and resentments. Her 15 plates of astral artwork have been brilliantly reproduced by Gavin Stairs of Pendas Productions. The acrylics and watercolours effectively convey the distance of her journey to spiritual enlightenment and appreciated beauty. Taking this journey with her is well worth the reading. I was truly inspired by this powerful, honest book which results in such forgiveness. 

Barbara Elizabeth O'Donnell is the author of the chapbook Near Perfect Pitch.