Review of Unlocked Dreams, a Collection of Poems by Catherine Marshall, edited by Shirley Ledgerwood

Without the editor’s preface and biography, the 18 poems by the late Catherine Marshall featured in Unlocked Dreams (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994) fall short of a book. But sandwiched by Shirley Ledgerwood’s deft narrative, this brief anthology is a cohesive, if not enduring, literary work. Ledgerwood recounts how Marshall, her roommate at Agnes Scott College and lifelong friend, gave her the handwritten manuscript as a graduation gift in 1936. Nearly six decades were to pass before  Ledgerwood shared the poetry with the world.

            Marshall (1914-1983), achieved much acclaim as a writer, theologian and lecturer, as did her spouse, the Reverend Peter Marshall (d. 1949). A Man Called Peter, the biography which she wrote about her first husband, was made into a movie in 1955, and Marshall’s 1967 novel Christy, based on the life of her mother, was a bestseller. She was also a brilliant poet, as the posthumously published collection shows. Marshall’s verses demonstrate a facility with the language that few have, and while she was a formalist for the most part, she manages to avoid forced rhymes and cramped phrases. She even “cheats” occasionally, ending a stanza with a slant rhyme or extra syllable, but even these infrequent liberties go unnoticed, or at least forgiven. Most of the poems rhyme: “Dirge of Autumn (25),” “Night Sounds (27)” and “There Will Be Rest (29)” are the exceptions. However, Marshall does not eschew form.

            About half of the offerings are sonnets, but the segues from line to line, stanza to stanza, are so smoothly executed that readers see poems first; only closer inspection reveals their construction. Not always perfect sonnets, and yet, perfect poems. In “April Sonnet” Marshall breaks the rules by pairing “wind” with “mind:”

  

                        When vagrant, straying fingers of the wind                                                                                                                                   . . . Held by some lonely outpost of the mind,/ (45).

            Personification peppers Marshall’s work, employed most efficaciously. In the pithy “Spring Growing Pains (47),” she writes of “blades of grass bowing to all the winds . . .” The poplars in “Spring Brew (49)” “. . . wag their heads and fix their hair.” Lesser poets attempting such verbal maneuvers produce clumsy, overblown prose. Marshall does it with style and aplomb, showing credible connections between her subjects and her readers.

            Her “Untitled,” while a beautiful poem, shows uncharacteristic laziness. Any poet who can come up with the most sophisticated metaphors, similes and imagery can certainly come up with a title! Ostensibly expressing her unrequited love for Peter, who at the time was not yet her spouse, “Untitled” is written in iambic pentameter, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd ee. The piece strives to be a sonnet, but “gives up” after line eight.           

Marshall’s poetry is almost too sublime, inaccessible to a lot of readers. The first poem, “God Grant Me Agony (13),” is rather jarring, and the piece only makes sense after being read aloud two or three times, slowly. Who would want to feel agony? Someone who believes that negative emotions are better than apathy. Other verses appear simple, pastoral and even frivolous on the surface, and plumbing the deeper levels of meaning requires some effort. As the19^th-century poet-priest Father Joseph Roux said, “Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think and those who cause others to think.” Marshall straddles the line.