ENID SHOMER ON THE TRIUMPH OF HER LATEST BOOK
"STARS AT NOON":
A Review by Ruth Daigon

STARS AT NOON is a revelation, so many events to explore in a rhythmic framework that makes moving from one event to another, from one relationship to another, fresh and substantive.

From the foundling living in poverty in the Florida Pan Handle

 ..."what i would give to wear a feed sack shift again
       and  stand barefoot    
       in restless silk of stream...

and the life she lived with tolerance and affection for the people who helped along the way, Miss Bostick who "payed her ten cents a week to haul firewood and taught her about 'becoming a lady'," but didn't stop her from climbing trees.

Shomer describes so deliciously all her country characters: the fancy lady who runs a "house" for the men at the mill, the Richler house where she was the Shabbos goy who taught her to "kosher the meat" and also "learned to give Nestle permanent waves." The combination of trades is more than amusing; it is genius.

Jackie learned everything anyone could teach her. Shomer describes with drama and verve this young girl with little schooling but with the drive, intelligence, and ambition that took her to the top.
  
This character does learn to become a "lady" and sweeps the reader along from her beauty shop beginnings past all the adventures and people who mark her way. And after many chapters, she finally discovers her true destiny-- to become an air plane pilot.  Shomer's description of flight for Jackie is gorgeous, even if a little terrifying.

... Swathed in silence, I drop
    the bones of my skull
    thrumming against my brain.
    Time is like an elastic band the way it stretches and zings back.

 Shomer pulls no punches writing about Jackie's life as an active participant in World War II and her role as founder of the Women's Air Force Pilots. Her words in your mouth about London under the Blitz could not be more powerful.   

   How this city blackens when the air raid
   sirens wail...You hear planes grinding the air, then
   silence, then if you're close enough---
   the sliding whistle of falling bombs.
   Tonight three dog fights overhead,
   the East End a vast lake of flames.
        

Records are established for speed, distance, and altitude, and both during and after the war she owned and operated a line of designer cosmetics for thirty years. It was as though she lived a dozen lives.

And her passionate marriage to husband Floyd is one of the finest love poems:

My daring wherever you go...take along
this white wish, this slip
of sympathetic magic
Tuck it inside...the let-hand pocket-
so my uphill curve
can leap in praise
against your heart.

She also ran for Congress, emphasizing the suffering of women during the war:    

...in the moon tonight, hazy
as the last breath
I once saw fogging a mirror/
when a mill worker died.
She dips her toothless jaw into a thin gruel of clouds
and is not nourished.          

Shomer sweeps us along from beauty shop beginnings to all the
adventures and people who mark the way: Amelia Earhart, Madame Chang Kai-Shek, major generals.

The unique voice and the dazzling imagery in this book bring to life every character in Jackie's life's drama, especially Amelia Earhart, her best friend:


Lighting these candles
I see your Electra glinting
as it tips into the sea.
If they ask me, I'll say
your last flight was endless.
The body is only the plane,
Amelia, in which the soul rides.

Cochran's life and exploits are beautifully contained in STARS AT NOON with lyric elegance and ravishing imagery. She was a unique woman in  "a passage from sawdust to stardust," and Shomer has accomplished  what very few poets have--the skill, energy, and understanding to create.

the best way to remember and honor Jackie Cochrane is to read and re-read Enid Shomer's poem.

All around me sky
streams past, long blue
corridor of the night.  Huge clouds

stretch from horseheads
to a kind of history
another world curled
in their roiling main.

STARS AT NOON by Enid Shomer, 112 pages, is available from University of Arkansas Press. Enid Shomer is the author of three other books of poetry: Stalking the Florida Panther (The Word Works, 1988); This Close to the Earth (Arkansas, 1992); Black Drum (Arkansas, 1997).
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© Copyright, Ruth Daigon.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.