Aligned with the Sky by Kathy Lohrum Cotton
Reviewed by jacob erin-cilberto
Reading Kathy Cotton’s poetry is a literary journey up to that magic place above the clouds. It feels like a breath of Heaven as we might imagine it.
In “Rainclouds Over the City,” she writes, “Today’s leaden sky is heavy/ as Monday-morning traffic- / snarled and clogged with/ a million slow-moving tons/ of dark clouds that press spring’s/ greens into deep shadows.” Now, how is that for taking something so mundane as a dreary day of clouds and traffic, then turning it into classic personification that can cause the reader to smile at dark skies and rain? And at the end of this same poem, we join the band with “the percussion of thunder.”
In ”Tiny Dancer,” she speaks of the “narrow cage,” ”Earthbound body” and “brilliant light spun out/ in lithesome twirling.” Kathy’s poetry certainly does spin brilliant light. She uncovers pain and turns it into words that somehow soothe our psyches. Everyone talks about the cost of pain and heartaches, yet this poet assuages that pain with ”Just because/ the sun/ and sky/ and love/ are free/ I rejoice.” Again, burdens of the heart and soul diminish as we read Cotton’s poetry and our heaviness lifts.
“The Art of Happiness” is like a “how to” poem. It shows we need to “smile at a hundred reasons/ to feel good, wrap myself in the joy/ Of those who’ve loved me, those I love, / those whose love may come along/ this very moment while I practice/ the simple art of happiness.” So many things we do in life require practice, but when do we think of practicing the art of happiness? And when do we think of happiness as an art? Sylvia Plath wrote, ”dying is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well.”
Maybe it is time we took Kathy Cotton’s advice and saw living in happiness as the preferred art. Poets don’t write “happy stuff” very easily. But this poet manages to do that so well, and we slip into her poetry with smiles and end up quite ”aligned with the sky.“ And we can certainly thank her for that journey and become “familiar with joy.”
— jacob erin-cilberto, author of Haiku and Senryu You
