Don Then: Kathleen Driskell offers book of poetry, Next Door to the Dead, that is anything but common

Death swirls around us every day of our lives. Sometimes, we face it personally; at others, from a distance.

Sadly, death is the outcome of war and it could tap on our window during a simple drive to the store. We hear about death on the news and it takes a prominent place in entertainment as the focal point of innumerable plays, novels, movies, and television shows. Lots of us like a good ‘whodunit?’ I know I do!

Death is something we all must face; nevertheless, very few welcome its knock on their doors. Most people I know want a place in paradise but those same individuals do not want to die to get there, which is, of course, the price of admission.

Fortunately, as Cicero wrote, “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
Kathleen Driskell’s book of poetry, Next Door to the Dead, underscores the Roman philosopher’s timeless theory. Her poems bring unique perspective to an age-old subject the gives many ‘the willies’ and makes others shiver.

Driskell, an associate editor of the Louisville Review and a professor at Spalding University, lives next door to a cemetery and her literal and figurative walks among the tombstones have led to a collection of poems that are bold, inviting, charming, different, humorous, and irreverent. Often, they slip the bonds of common expectation.

The dozens of poems she has compiled are deserving of kudos. They are as off-beat as they are entertaining, as somber as they are precise. Driskell’s work is incisive, meditative, and, occasionally, comical.

From my view, poetry opens venues to unexpected realities. In Next Door to the Dead, Driskell’s voices define social injustice, ask questions, and whisper of common sense or the lack thereof.

One poem I especially like is entitled ‘Just As.’ It speaks measures about inequality:

Why are the smaller stones
so weighted?
Were not those graves filled
with souls equal to all others?

Another entitled ‘Epitaph for the Gravedigger’ reflects the ‘about face’ we all us must make:

Here lies ol’ thin Pete, who, for once,
Got to stick around and meet those
at the gravesite, instead of hiding
out in the dark wood beyond,
his back against a lichened tree
wishing the weepy folk were gone…

A promotional excerpt about Driskell’s poetry offers additional insight: “The lives and afterlives of the deceased and their people come into vivid focus. . .the living are not forgotten in this thought-provoking collection, and there are numerous poems about mourners, the people who maintain the grounds, the nighttime parties of trespassing teens, and even the ‘dark congregation’ of birds that perches ominously on headstones.”

Driskell polishes an often-unmentionable subject with a poet’s practiced touch, which fosters growth intellectually. Next Door to the Dead is available through bookstores and websites, including Amazon.com. The book is one in a series of Kentucky Voices offered by The University Press of Kentucky.

Donald Then, a novelist and experienced editor and journalist, is NKyTribune’s literary editor. He will review books written by local authors or those with a Northern Kentucky setting. Reach him at author@djamesthen.com. Visit his web site at www.djamesthen.com. You can also follow Don on Twitter: Novelguy@DJamesThen.