Resilience by Emily Bilman – A collection of poetry.
With her skilful use of metaphor and her wonderful use of language and imagery, Emily Bilman reminds us that our capacity for resilience endows us with the power to survive trauma. The modern Faust, to whom the book refers, defies death through the power of resilience. Like Faust, we have to surpass evil impulses to purify ourselves and reach resilience. As we survive tragedy and misfortune, we begin to evolve and grow spiritually. Emily draws upon a humanistic premise that extends from the mythological dimension to our contemporary values. The poems in this book show that the poet has been in those hollows of isolation and solitude and risen from them. In reading this book, the reader attains not only an existential resilience based upon their own understanding, but experiences a personal metamorphosis.
More about Resilience
In Resilience, with her wonderful use of language and imagery, Emily Bilman weaves through the poems with her skilful use of metaphor. Each section of this poetry book reminds us that our own capacity for resilience endows us with the power to survive trauma. As we survive tragedy or misfortune, we begin to evolve personally and grow spiritually. In these poems, the poet pens an understanding of compassion and the connectivity of each of us to each other and each to all, as in ‘Everyman’ – “we are everyman / our eyes shine / like lamp posts / our words are / thwarted angels / each word, a gift”.
Both literally and metaphorically, the poet draws upon a humanistic premise that extends from the mythological dimension to our contemporary values, as in ‘Daemons’. Here can be found the wisdom that swells from an understanding of our struggles in the continuity of time – “my-daemons-in-chaos / vie with my synapses for ideas linked / to metaphors as an old poem / is joined to a new one and I circumscribe / new symbols on words…”
The poems in this book show that the poet herself, has been in those hollows of isolation and solitude and risen from them as can be read in the title poem ‘Resilience’ – “As I entered the tuff-earth’s / Dark recesses, came in and out / Of her damp caves where I saw…” to the final poem, ‘Transfiguration’ – “The woman singing with her desert-voice / transformed the sky and the sand / and the nomad sitting by the barren bush / into one seamless immensity…”.
It might be noted, at least in this reader’s eyes, that the six sections of this book, “Resilience, The Stairwell, Everyman, The Tempest, Faust’s Controversy, Transfiguration”, are not dissimilar to the well known stages of loss and grief. Like Faust to whom the book refers, we have to surpass evil impulses to reach resilience. The modern Faust defies death through the power of resilience. In the process of reading this book, the reader attains not only an existential resilience in his own understanding of man but a personal metamorphosis.
Bruce Kauffman, Author and Poet
Kingston, Ontario, Canada