One of the differences between an artist and a layman is that the eyes of the artist are like cameras that capture images to be recalled later on. This is what I remembered when I read ‘Delicate Access’. Only then I remembered that Madeleine Marie Slavick was a photographer as well. Capturing images in her poetry is very evident and that imprints her meanings on the mind of the reader.

The book starts with ‘Lines and Memory’, a poem dedicated to the poet’s family, to her three-year-old brother who drowned in a swimming pool. The poet brilliantly captures some scenes in a cinematic show. We see the child playing innocently with a water hose. He responds to the call of another friend, the swimming pool, only to drown in it. The scene of the mother trying to breathe life into her dying child is vivid and touching. All the five stanzas of the poem show different scenes minutely captured and delicately expressed. Though the poem is a personal experience, it is not written in an autobiographical way. The poet does not tell us about her sadness. She merely lets her camera do the job of showing us what had happened leaving in us a deeper impact than any telling words can achieve. If a picture equals a thousand words in journalism, it surely equals more in poetry.

The first section of the book named ‘hum, city, hum’ contains nine poems followed by another section called ‘Permanent Resident’ that contains thirteen poems. These twenty two poems carry the scent of Hong Kong, the spirit of its streets, ferry, and subway. These poems are written in love of Hong Kong. Though the book starts with ‘hum, city, hum’, I think these poems were written in later dates than the second section ‘Permanent Resident’. We can notice the shift in the poet’s writing style from her usual way of showing some continuous, flowing images as we have seen in her first poem ‘Lines and Memory’ to another style that tends to capture fragments of unrelated images rather than a long sequence of images in one scene. She starts to use the language differently. No more she uses commas but spaces instead. The form of her poems changed as well.

The third section ‘love, unlove’ has ten poems in which the poet tries again to break away from her usual style in the structure of her language, the images, and the form of the poem itself.  The first poem ‘when he said’ is written a word a line though one obviously cannot read it this way. But it seems that the poet has decided to be different, to be new. Or maybe she wanted the poem to be read slowly on purpose as though to slow down time itself.

‘Cicada’ is a short and symbolic poem that ends with a question left unanswered. A good poem is a poem that asks questions and leaves them floating on our minds even after the poem is finished.

                   If you find a mate, you die,

                   and your first shell stays

                   clinging to your summer tree.

                   If you cannot?

‘The last memory’ is a poem of fragmented images that form together one picture of remembrance. The poem starts with mentioning some old marks like the dent in the carpet and the scraped floor and ends with a powerful stanza that is full of symbols and can be interpreted in different levels:

                   The dry bathroom sink

                   has a crack

                   It is not your black hair

That sink is our emotions that go dry and suffer a crack. The lover is not there anymore, not even his hair.

‘Two places in which I love you’ and ‘arc’ are two pieces of prose with long sentences rather than short ones in poems like ‘Fear is dead’.  These two poems are the first prose poems that will lead to a separate section of prose called ‘ricochet’ at the end of the book.

The poem ‘island’ is a poem of reflections. It starts with a word followed by the poet’s reflection on it. This poem will lead to another long poem called ‘To Nature’ in another section and is written in the same manner. Another new approach the poet has taken in her writing. She says in ‘island’:

                   Village lights

                   small hands holding cup moments

And says in ‘To Nature’:

                   The night is so windless

trees stand in themselves

                   like a thousand god praying

                   Rain sounds

                   of fate

                   Fog. Wet

                   breath

                   Snow. Skin of

                   clouds

                   Wind. Carrier

                   of time

                   Horizon. Daily

                   death

                   Today. A strand

                   of hair

                   Waves dizzy

                   themselves

                    One leaf, one

                   Moment

                   Tree, tree, stand

                   inside

                   me

The language of these two poems is terse, made of direct similes and short lines with as few verbs, adverbs, and adjectives as possible.

‘Fear is dead’ is a misty poem that leaves the reader with a vague and obscure impression. It is like looking at a view submerged in a thin sheet of fog.

In this section ‘love, unlove’, we explore different forms and styles in the poet’s writing.

The section called ‘Placing Asia’ contains thirteen poems written in and about different places in Asia. The poet is celebrating her love to Asia in general and Hong Kong in particular.

‘Being with Buddha’ is a poem of tranquility, peace, and love. It has the spirit of Sufi poetry.

                    When I see you again

                   you talk of needing no one

                   only everyone’s silence

                   no distractions

                   only time

                   Love never needs to speak again

‘I didn’t expect’ is a poem of five stanzas and the title itself can be read at the beginning of the first three stanzas. The title itself is part of the poem. The shape of the poem resembles a running river. Reading the word ‘river’ in the second and the fifth stanzas justifies writing the poem in that shape.

‘cycle’ is another misty poem that is left in the open vulnerable to any interpretation. It is one of these poems that the reader decides the meaning for himself with no authority from the author.

‘Staring into Tea’ describes a glass of tea seen by a child:

                   In his father’s large glass

                   of water and tea: sky, earth,

                   sea, forest. He learns shift, saturation,

                   softness; staring is allowed the child

Only a child or a poet can imagine these four elements in the large glass of tea: the bottom of the glass is the earth, the empty part is the sky, the tea is the sea, and the tea leaves are the forest.

‘colo(u)r’ is a collection of poems that can only be written by a photographer who is a poet or a poet who is a photographer. In other words, it is only Madeleine Marie Salvick who can write poems like these dedicating each poem to a certain colour.

Her words are measured with a teaspoon. They are trimmed just like trees and bushes trimmed by their gardener. Unnecessary and sometimes necessary words are omitted. The poet is always talking to her inner self through her poetry. She asks questions that return to her unanswered. She wonders about the possibilities of the unknown. She is not sure of anything but she is sure of beauty and kindness. She is taking her time to explore things believing that only a slow seeing is the revolution of kindness.