NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Cherry Smyth's tone throughout THE FUTURE OF SOMETHING DELICATE is so consistently even that, at first, the reader thinks that the quality of the poems is also even. This isn't so, however, and a second reading gives the impression of a variety in quality — from poems which are a little flat for a collection of this nature, to poems which would fit well in a "selected" volume.

A poet's tone is one of his or her most basic attributes. A poet cannot speak without having discovered his or her own tone. Sometimes it seems as if a certain relationship between tone and subject matter is the thing the poet is saying. Often, too, the tone seems to define the things that a poet can write about. Smyth's tone is clear-eyed, precise and experienced in the ways of the emotions. And there is also, more subtly, a sense of sustaining satisfaction at having worked her way into being able to flex and explore her voices.

All tones contain restrictions that are inseparable from their strengths, and the intelligence-based poise that enables Smyth to speak does carry with it a reluctance to yield to the emotion which is such an essential element in the transformations of poetry. This is not always the case, however, and Smyth's most successful poems occur where her intelligence, rather than replacing or desiccating the effect, becomes its liberating shape. PAINTED HORSES, the first poem in the collection is, for example, a chilling enactment of the pitilessness which sexual revenge can make us capable of when a relationship is coming to an end. Calmly, a woman delineates what happens when fear shoots through her at the demands of her partner:

	But that wasn't as bad
	as when you said you'd 
	go out and find sex
	if I didn't give you any more,

	I don't rush the dark passageway
	to Milner Square, though I am pushed
	to run from the bloke behind —
	he is young and tall and black.
	I'm ashamed that I glance back
	to check his pace, to glimpse
	the contours of his face,
	half-hidden by his white hoodie.

	Driving from the airport through a checkpoint,
	fearful you'd forget your name, the way you prayed.

	All winter I watched your single cyclamen unbend its crook,
	to upflutter in the only light.

	I do it with dated faith —
	search the night sky for a rare conjunction,
	wait or a clear moon to distinguish
	the knuckle of rings, the red-green glitter,
	an intensity closer to the horizon,
	reaching from the past into my room's future.

At their best, the poems escape a predictability of conception. The poems depend on the quality of their perceptions and the best occur when her precise considerations tap into a belief in a world beyond negotiation and role-play.