Zen Forest, review by Lavinia Inbar, Poetry Canada Review

     Carolyn Zonailo's Zen Forest is a densely packed collection of poems about spiritual experience. The experience of death is one of the central concerns. In "A Question Of Faith," the "fear of dying" is dealt with defiantly:

If the world must end
let it end
with me in your arms
held in this willing embrace
that defies
at least momentarily
the final explosion.

There is also a kind of defiance in "A Secular Ishmael's Elegy" which tells of the "sudden and violent deaths" of three poets:

The poems from their youth
will continue to speak against tyranny
for tyranny, in any form, is a mimic of death.

However, in "Woman Walking Dog" there is the glimmer of a more spiritual and less emotional experience of death:

And her search for a way to face death
with grace, to go alone
into that darkness
is an act beyond contemplation.
Martha's courage, sure as grace,
shines as a light on the unknown

     The middle section of Zen Forest is full of superstitious invocations against suffering and death such as: "A sooth for the evil-eye," "Charm to ward off the grim reaper," and "Chant to give comfort in extreme pain." While most of the chants and spells are a fearful and emotional response, they still represent a spiritual searching as much as do the courageous and dignified actions of the "Woman Walking Dog."

     It is the final third of the book which contains aspects of Zen as is suggested in its title. In "Climbing" we encounter the Zen-inspired attitude of the mountain climbers who are

...going toward
the top of the mountain
just for the sheer joy of it

In other poems Zonailo dabbles in Zen koans: "If the bowl is empty/ is it an almost perfect space?" and "How much rain can the angel hold/in the palm of his hand?" Besides the Zen poems, this last section has still more poems on the subject of death.

     The book concludes with a long poem about Vancouver's beaches which is full of spiritual experiences usually involving memory. "City By The Sea" (made up of seven medium length poems), is sometimes weakened by sloppy imagery such as in

...images
that have become tangled
like a web

The tangled web is a tired cliché and in this case makes for an inaccurate simile as well since webs are actually rather ordered affairs.

     After the meatier poems dealing with death and suffering, the littoral experience of the final poem seems unimportant, a weak conclusion to an otherwise spiritually vigorous collection.

Copyright by Lavinia Inbar: www.carolynzonailo.com, 2004.