Review by Lynda La Rocca
Poetry – August 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
Letters From A Stranger
by James Tipton
Published in 1998 by Conundrum Press
Crested Butte, Colorado
ISBN: 0-9657159-2-2
WHILE READING Letters From A Stranger, James Tipton’s first full-length poetry collection, I kept thinking of a line from Charles Dickens’ classic novel, Oliver Twist, “Please, sir, I want some more.” Because I do — I want more and more and more of Tipton’s lush, deeply-felt poetry.
Tipton wrote the poems in this 82-page collection for Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, to whom the book is dedicated. In a three-page foreword as delicious as the poetry itself, Allende fondly chronicles her relationship with Tipton, a Western Slope beekeeper who sent her an unsolicited letter in 1994, followed by another missive containing a tantalizing story with no ending. Charmed by and almost unwillingly drawn to this stranger, Allende responded and an enduring friendship was born.
The poems in Letters From A Stranger literally burst with sensuality. I’m tempted to call this a book of women’s love poems, although certain selections can hardly be called “romantic.” For instance, a narrator who “finessed my way into (the) panties” of a barroom pick-up while other men look on enviously, is not exactly Cary Grant, even if the woman in question is named “Poetry.”
But then there are lines like this:
“I would like to rub oil with the odor of coconut
over the body of a woman I love . . .”
And this:
“So many times I have felt the sea rising
in my heart, when in my hands
I hold your letters . . .”
Or this:
“Tonight, Love, let us rub our aging souls
against each other to make fire,
let us listen to the words that wander
through our bodies . . . ”
Tipton’s images are strong and striking, yet tender and at times more delicate than the proverbial butterfly’s wing. The author is keenly, joyously alive; his almost painfully sharp powers of observation cut most deeply when he reveals the wondrous in the commonplace, recalling mica “that flaked like the pages of angels,” or a cat “who dances off the bed … to go outside and hunt the day.”
That’s why the repetition of certain phrases in different poems is mildly disturbing. Honey jars on windowsills, hands inside hands, and rising bread are all wonderful in and of themselves. The brutality of cocaine stuffed into the bodies of children is gut-wrenching the first time around. But when these images pop up almost verbatim in other poems — within the same collection — there’s a sense that the author is being derivative of himself.
A poet with Tipton’s extraordinary talent doesn’t need to beguile this way. Long may he write; James Tipton’s poetry is magnificent.
— Lynda La Rocca