Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Review of PURSUIT in Harbor Review


https://www.harbor-review.com/ellen-davis

PURSUIT BY KAREN NEUBERG

REVIEWED BY ELLEN DAVIS


KAREN NEUBERG’S PURSUIT

In Pursuit (Kelsay Books, 2019), Karen Neuberg successfully

escapes the confines of time and linear thinking. Neuberg uses

the moon, ouroboros, a seafarer and his wife, two paintings,

and a French film to discover how her memories and many

transformations operate—in light of her limited time on earth—

as part of infinity. 


The poems explore the different stages of her life as a whole

that cannot separate itself from its parts, or phases, like those

of the moon, which is always waxing or waning but remains

unchanged. While she looks out from “time’s long tube,”

Neuberg confronts herself at various stages of her life.

In her reflection on memory and transformation, she questions

her voice, her face, and, “....How many / faces does it find before

it finds its face?’” demonstrating an uncanny ability

to communicate abstractions beautifully and accessibly.

Neuberg’s poetry swirls around the reader’s wrist,

inviting us to look into a memory box of our past selves

in her poem “Encuentro,” written after Remedios Varo’s 1959

painting of the same name: ”Still I can’t look away /

and constantly peek back / into what held/still holds me /

boxed & peering, in & out.”


The poems’ threads spiral across the pages, connecting themselves

to each other through memory, which Neuberg describes as,

“stitched & pining / behaving as though / I am its guest /

and not its host.” 


Her poems deftly explore the shape and direction of time

and transformation, showing there is no beginning or end,

instead an infinity that continues to transform itself

into the new and unknown. The ideas in Pursuit

are tethered together through lines that snag and pull

memories to the surface, creating a larger picture of a life

as a whole, rather than a snapshot in time.


December, 2020


Ellen Davis graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from
Washburn University in 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an M.A.
in Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University. She is the current
managing editor of the campus literary magazine Cow Creek Review.