Book review of "In Common Things," a chapbook by Jefferson Singer (2024)

In Common Things by Jefferson Singer

The poet shines a light on life’s quiet moments that usually pass unnoticed and unremembered.

Glimpsing the title of In Common Things brought to mind Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things, except the “things” about which Neruda sings his odes are commonplace objects, such as a salt shaker, household furniture, items of food, a bar of soap, or a pair of scissors.

Whereas in In Common Things, Jefferson Singer sings praises to everyday events and to routine human interactions, what he calls “hymnals of the everyday.” The title of Singer’s chapbook may seem somewhat off center, as here the poet omits mere “things” from his probing observations. Yet the commonplace, the everyday, and the routine all are strands of the same fabric. So the title is still on target as the poet shines a light on life’s quiet moments that usually pass unnoticed and unremembered. Moments where the mundane becomes memorable. Events, for instance, when he’s baking eggplant for dinner, when he’s making his semiannual visit to the dentist, and when he’s doing yardwork with his son-in-law who is “as close to a son / as I will ever have.”

Singer holds deep reverence for family life. Call him a family man. Family members occupy and are central to most poems: his mother, his dying father, his brothers, his wife, their two daughters, their two sons-in-law, their grandchildren.

His wife, to whom the chapbook is dedicated, remains omnipresent. She’s central to one poem about his marriage proposal to her, in another on their wedding day, in a third about their relocating cross-country during their second year of marriage, and in a fourth poem commemorating their 40th anniversary. In a fifth poem, she steps aside a bit, steadfast by his bedside during his brush with death.

Other poems chronicle hikes in wildernesses, bushwacking in suburban parks, walks on suburban streets, or quiet strolls enroute to the supermarket. And let’s not forget the title poem whose two lines give voice to the theme of the chapbook: “it’s taken near my lifetime / to measure worth in common things”

Shining gems of individual phrases adorn every page, yet the meanings of the entirety of some of the poems eluded this knucklehead reviewer … until reaching the final three pages of Notes. Consider bookmarking those Notes, to refer to them either before or immediately after reading each poem.

No notes needed to discern that underlying many of the poems lurks the theme of death, including the poet’s own. The most dramatic poem, “Listening to the Sea Shell,” recounts his intimation of death prompted by the unexplained permanent loss of hearing in one ear. The episode recalls an old adage. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

In Singer’s songs, death is counterbalanced in the passage from the older generation to the younger, from him to his children, from his children to his grandchildren, and from his writings to his readers: “must be my hand / that holds my pen / your hand / that holds this page.”

Reviewed by Mark Mathew Braunstein www.MarkBraunstein.Org