Common Ground by Kathy Lohrum Cotton
Reviewed by jacob erin-cilberto
What can be said about Common Ground, a poetic offering from Kathy Lohrum Cotton? Her words are most relatable to both the avid poetic mind as well as the reader who might not have so much of a poetic leaning. As her “Words of Peace Villanelle” states:
“to find a common ground where conflicts cease
to rage alone, a place where pain abates
There is sweet symmetry in words of peace”
Now who cannot relate to these words? We all seek peace today in this world of unrest, many of us if not most rage alone and we can all find symmetry in words of peace. Hers really hit the mark and soften the heart.
In another poem, Kathy proclaims:
“I will be the word ‘welcome’
Spoken by eyes and open hands
till we become
a fluent conversation.”
There could not be a more fluent wordsmith than Kathy Cotton. She shows us how to construct “a mythic man/ from his finest qualities” and how to construct poems of the finest quality creating “a story she will recall/ all her remaining days.” I consider poets as artists and Kathy is that in every sense of the word “artist.” She is well-known for mixing words with drawings, stripping life down to essentials, with no words wasted but rather reassembled to make what we can understand and relate to so easily. And she certainly sharpens them down “to a thing of beauty.”
In one poem “Lipstick Over a Bruise,” she writes:
“You live in the fluorescence of it,
A thousand-watt wish to burn off
the ever-clinging humidity of sadness
secreted beneath rugs and cushions”
And if we search beneath those rugs and cushions, we will surely find a bright light in her voice that is quite capable of reducing those shadows and creating knowing smiles to replace them.
In “Kinesthetic Conversation,” Kathy infers:
“spattered with ellipses
I touch your hand
in this unedited moment
just because
you are within reach.”
We are all within reach of her moments, both edited and unedited. And our reactions will often be unedited and from the heart because that is where her words will hit us, at the core.
All we need to do is to pick up Common Ground and start reading the first few pages. It will be enough to engage us in common ground with the poet, a ground we will want to cover from first page to last. And it is a journey that will set deeply within our conscious and remain indefinitely.
—jacob erin-cilberto (author of pour me another poem, please)
