NOTABLE WORKS REVIEW: “Survival Ritual” by John Edward Lawson
NOTABLE WORKS
REVIEW: “Survival Ritual” by John Edward Lawson
In SuiPsalms, Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2012
Reviewed by E.F. Schraeder
Trigger Warning: This review addresses mental health and grief.
At the midsection and heart of John Edward Lawson’s provocative poetry collection SuiPsalms, readers find a potent two-page poem called “Survival Ritual.” With a striking concise narrative repetition of the anchoring end of stanza lines, “This is life, and you survive / You survive” the poem constructs a poignant portrait of the insidious and incapacitating nature of grief and yes how to survive it.
Lawson moves readers through experiences and moments in this five-stanza sketch of loss in all of its raw emotional agony. Lawson sketches the journey gently, with a calm tone in opening stanzas that take on the manner of advice with opening stanza lines offering an action: “Think of your loved one’s voice,” and “See your loved one in dreams.” Two common themes for early grief, like hearing and dreaming, bring the poem into immediate focus. Then Lawson spins readers much as grief spins attention, with a dive into senses, memories, and the confusing whirlwind of feelings that often characterize the loss of a loved one, the rough daze of time that moves “too fast” and then “slow to freeze-frame” or the ways familiar places become outposts of loss, carved by the fresh pain of recalling shared joy that will never again be experienced. Despite the loneliness of these sharp reminders, Lawson pivots to healing as the poem progresses.
Each oceanic stanza swells and surges, and the effect builds a tidal flow of breathing, allowing painful feelings to rise so they can be re-experienced and released. The final stanza offers practical and meaningful advice about cherishing “something that belonged to your loved one,” keeping it visible, and speaking about it with anyone who notices it. This culminating gesture engenders the piece with a note of hope and a course of action to honor, remember, and keep love alive in the life a survivor will go on to live. As someone who has dealt with/is dealing with complicated grief, the elegant refrains bring me to the edges of my own familiar pain, while immersing me in the eventual steps of recovery, from the initial shock and confusion to the ability to remember and continue to love what is gone. With a bit of poetic magic, Lawson’s cooly voiced narrator casts the relatable, ominous truth of loss into a vivid, pulsing ache. Here I return again to Lawson’s nudging refrain, “This is life, and you survive / You survive.” What a strange kind of solace is the aching reality of survival and affirmation of life despite great loss. Something of a horror poet’s dream, “Survival Ritual” is as lovely as it is ugly, revealing the simple brutality of outlasting a loved one.
E.F. Schraeder writes about not quite real worlds. A Rhysling-nominated poet, Schraeder’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies and their full-length publications include The Price of a Small Hot Fire (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2023), What Happened Was Impossible (Ghoulish Books, 2023), and other works.
