Bio

Alice in Ruby Slippers

Book review by David Wayne Landrum

Alice in Ruby Slippers. Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas. Kelsay Books.

Alice in Ruby Slippers by Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas uses the rather unusual title to give us a clue to the book's theme. The title references two modern female pop-culture icons:  Alice Liddell from Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz. Through this, the reader is told that the book will be about women; that the voice in the book will be—like Dorothy and Alice—young, virginal, and on a quest (Dorothy wanted to get back home; Alice simply to understand the bewildering world in which she suddenly finds herself). The book frequently returns to these two ideas. Before the main text begins, the reader finds quotations by Lewis Carroll and Frank L. Baum. Carroll speaks of believing unbelievable things; the author quotes the famous line from the film version of Baum's The Wizard of Oz, "A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others." And the book's dedication is "for my mother."

All of these elements signal what we will find in that poems that follow. The opening poem, "Lost in Kansas," refers, of course, to Dorothy's situation before the tornado transports her to Oz and states the narrator's desire to settle, to find repose, to be secure. This desire is expressed in a poetic epistle to the Good Witch Glinda. The poem ends with the lines, "I've clicked my heels not once but thrice, / And still can't find a place called home,/ and still can't find a place called home." The first poem is an expression of a desire, a wish, that runs all through the book.

The first cluster of poems relates to the death of a mother. The very poignant poems, "Since You've Been Gone," has the sorrowful, powerful  line, "A dream can be a devastating place / though more alarming still to wake and face / the truth of what is real." The first section of the book deals with loss. But loss never simply involves the person who is lost and the one who lost that person. Many poems represent memories of growing up, but also the terrible liturgy of cancer treatment and the aftermath losing a mother. The section also contains meditations on bereavement, poems that parallel literary reference with the narrator's loss, mythic reference (Calypso, Titania, Rapunzel) and mention of other figures from scenarios of loss in well-known books and poems.

Pop culture is better known that literature or classical mythology, and the book draws on these sources as well. Alice in Ruby Slippers mentions the film version of The Wizard of Oz several times, to Billie Holiday's grim song, "Strange Fruit." The poem, "Final Girl," about the stock character-girl who manages to survive the designs of a serial killer in modern films like Friday the Thirteenth, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street. The last part of that sonnet is particularly poignant:

                                                                  … Each scene unfurls

                                    to horrors played, where killers never leave

                                    an out for teenage boys, but final girls

are always spared. The females take reprieve—

beyond The Ring, What Lies Beneath is grim

but rest assured the final girl will win.

The poem is about female resilience. It is a marvelous way of stating, with grim irony, that women survive; like the iconic "final girl" in horror movies, they do not let themselves be overwhelmed and destroyed. The poem is a brilliantly reframed exploration of the nature of personal loss, drawing its images from a source not often used in writing about poignant and personal loss but marvelously powerful and effective.

The second section focuses on loss and incorporates the mythic. It is still focused upon iconic female figures. There are poems that reference Emily Dickenson, Alice Liddell, and others; there are more poems on family loss; and also exploration of female types in such poems as "Charlatan" and "She Walks in Cruelty" (an inversion of Byron's "She Walks in Beauty"); humorous poems such as "What's Under Your Kilt?", historical lyrics ("For Larnell Bruce, Jr.," "Odalisque"), poems that touch on issues ("A Mother's Message to her Son"), and poems that are intertextual, referencing well-known works by other authors (e.g., "As If the Hours Wait," subtitled, after reading, Because I could not stop for death (famous poem by Emily Dickenson).

Alice in Ruby Slippers encompasses a great deal of variety and contains a range of subjects; but always, the theme of womanhood and, especially, of loss, ties these varied poems together into a powerful unity. It explores the deep wells of personal loss, from the loss of childhood, of friendships, of place, but especially the profound grief of a daughter losing her mother. The poems are formalist, and this adds to their music and lyricism—and to the poignant sadness—the reader encounters in the book. When it comes to sadness, poetry can be cathartic—and such is the case with Alice in Ruby Slippers.