Between Work and Light by Rachel King
dancing girl press, 2018
If you’re searching for a sense of home, then you’ll find it in Rachel King’s new chapbook, Between Work and Light. King’s speaker explores her own roots and invites us to join in her discoveries along the way. Traveling to the East Coast, she aches for “the gray and mist and that damp scent” that only come from her home in Portland. She opens her life up to the reader, capturing a wistful spirit that returns her to her origins. Her vivid realism leads us to examine ourselves and find a sense of home wherever we are in life.
King’s vulnerability cuts through her chapbook. “Fridge Note #52” reveals the speaker’s everyday thoughts and waters them until they sprout into revelations. She comments on the weather and the growth of her vegetable plants, but as she puts her own life under the microscope, we see her inner complexities. She admits that she is recreating herself, aware of her sensitivity to the pressures of life:
so busy making myself from scratch I forget
my delicate lining, vulnerable to compression,
in rain or sun. I will foster my savvy side
by answering questions indirectly.
The speaker’s honesty brings us into her reality. In rain or sun, we are vulnerable, seeing our own thoughts and feelings in words; we avoid her mother’s questions and feel her twinge of guilt after answering questions indirectly. Between Work and Light celebrates the ordinary and finding our home in each other. King calls us to expose our roots and have our facades “fade like a trunk fallen into the earth.”
It is not only vulnerability that draws us to King’s work. Her search for meaning in others’ lives brings purpose to our own. Her title piece, “Between Work and Light,” draws inspiration from painter Edward Hopper’s “Pennsylvania Coal Town.” In the illustration, a man pauses from raking a plot between two houses, and King’s observations lead her to create her own art. The speaker wonders if the man is tired after a long day’s work and why he chooses not to rest. After faithfully raking, the man is “ready for the world’s demands,” though the speaker is “unsure if that light or your work gave you strength” to continue. When we pause, we are present in our surroundings, and when we are faithful in our work, we can be faithful to the world around us. This is the true spirit of her chapbook. By observing the work of others, King reminds us that life is found between work and light. With the speaker, we return home to Portland, forever marked by the New Hampshire mountains, ready to return to our backyard gardens, and “tomato stalks [that] popped up a foot yesterday.”
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Danielle Shumaker is a student and playwright. A Yankee in the South, she’s grown to love the Tennessee mountains while still holding onto her Northern roots. She hopes to pursue a doctorate in rhetoric and composition to foster a love for writing in college classrooms. This is her first publication.