Review: Before the Snow Moon

A chapbook by Alison Swan

Alice Greene & Company

Throughout Before the Snow Moon there are neither page numbers nor punctuation. Alison chooses instead the natural pause of a line break or syllabic accent to pace readers. Subtle, but apt, as is her subject and voice. The opening lines of her poem: “In Medias Res” immediately call to mind similar lines from William Stafford’s famous poem, “Traveling Through the Dark.” However, where Stafford contemplates the impact and value of human life vs non-human life. Swan’s perspective reads much less anthropocentrically. She is not apart from nature, she is of it. Her communion is her default mode, and to join society is only a pause. In the closing lines of the title poem, the speaker, having been awakened mid-slumber, has gone to the window in search of an owl: “Cold air carried hoots and soughs across the sill / I climbed back under to listen to everything”. These are poems from a grateful, humble, careful poet, one who marvels at the depth of
the world and feels greater responsibility than power.