Eight Pale Women

Eight Pale Women, by James C. Hopkins.
107 pgs. Paper $10.00
ISBN: 0-915380-53-6



Two new books just issued from Word Works numbers this publisher's titles to more than 50.This is a credit to small press publishing, nonprofit art activities, and to volunteers and good leadership – whose goal is the proliferation of good poetry – books that we read now, and later find achieve literary notoriety.

James C. Hopkins premieres his first book, Eight Pale Women, with this personal odyssey, as he makes his way across the world through India, to the Pancake House on 29 or getting to Rt. 11 then maybe South Carolina, or Blacksburg Va. This poet leads with his emotional life in his hip pocket and a pencil behind his ear to chart the blue print of a journey – to malehood – to love – and back again. Along the way, the road is littered with carnivals and restaurants, 4 door Fords, a drive-in… each pebble against the shoe is a remarkable sighting of the world seen from a point of view only other poets can envy.

From "self portrait" (p.12)

fifty miles north of fairbanks

the asphalt gives out

the gravel begins

and there's six hundred miles to go.

here's where you start to see yourself from above –

tiny red pickup in a sea of fir,

the upper corner of the world.

and a hundred miles later

it's the arctic circle

and even the a.m. radio dies.

only satellites peeking out form the lid of the sky…

…

This is no travelogue, readers; this poem becomes an insight into what loneliness means when converted to land and sky, and how one puts himself against his destiny like a giant poker chip. Hopkins does this in poem after poem, so that we come to know his wisdom like no other poet quite does it. There is a strong personality behind every adventure, relationship, observation, moment, event… but what we feel most is the spiritual vitality of a man. From the title poem: "eight pale women" (p.78)

…

in the yucatan

the feathered musicas

work their gold

into jaguars and bats

and scatter them across the andes.

the trainos tickle their throats

with ivory spatulas

to purge themselves pure for their gods…

…

yesterday

at the edge of the woods

eight women,

pale and univited,

appeared and whispered,

"come with me" –

eight pale women

gauzed,

and carved

like ivory.

thin, thin life

i have dreamed you so.

The last line reveals James Hopkins' poetic strength. He is well acquainted with illusion, the veils of light and shadow, the mysteries that populate our roadhouses, runways, and foreign deserts. What these poems say is "I have chosen a world without a ray of dark. I have traveled its surface and find it to be a place to know my humanity." (reviewers comment.) This brings me to the essence of these poems. A longing and searching, yes, but a true belief that what is seen shimmering is our own projection. And if some say travel can be a religious experience, Hopkins actually makes it one. His spiritual handwriting scrawls across each poem with a transparency that makes the reader calm from the reading. Yet real things happen to real people, as this books shows,

reasons (p.15)

a stalled car

simmering

in the mohave.

sagebrush

and obsolete

ochre mountains.

a soapgold smear

of some borrowed

clouds.

and the

far-off wingflap

of India.

i am falling

from my family

like a stone.

The physical and the mystical are one with Hopkins; this book wants us to fall with him into vision. We feel the east and west comfortably coexisting; for, the book moves its poems from an American trekking the outside world, its rugged paths, to the breath of a man saying the world, from the inner eye. Describing becomes imagining, and finally, we reach an Asian tenderness at our journey's end.

"one meeting" (pg. 103)

a woman

slips

in and out

of her dreams

at will.

the cloud

is in

the paper,

so the tiger

is still

in the tea leaves.

from dark eggs,

snow –

white birds.

James Hopkins has published one chapbook previous to this, The Walnut Tree Waits for Its> Bees (Mica Press,1997.) Eight Pale Women is the work of a seasoned writer who waited to know something about himself before he held it up for the world to see.