poetry book club: a review of deborah keenan’s ‘willow room, green door’

by Jessica Fox-Wilson

I come from a long line of writers; I’ve only met a few of them.

After three years of graduate school, this is one of the most significant things I learned. Writers come from a long line of other writers, and the line stretches back as far as their reading habits. I learned this lesson from Deborah Keenan, my professor and principal thesis advisor, and author of Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems.

Reading Keenan’s newest poems in this collection, I was struck by how intentionally and specifically she lists her influences, as an act of homage and a point of reference. Her influences range from the literary to the artistic and even the musical. She carries on a conversation with other artists, rooted from her reflections on their work. She adapts their words and images, grapples with their meanings and twists them into something new. She quotes Jackson and Rukeyeser, names Kandinsky and Hockney, invites them inside.

Taken as an entire collection, Willow Room, Green Door is a record to living a creative life. Not living it as a Zen Buddhist or a Bohemian dropout, but as a teacher, mother, writer and wife. While reading the book, it is clear that she is conflicted about this type of existence. For instance, in “It’s a Book about Summer, So Cottonwoods and the River are Key” she writes:

… Every poet she knows
Who actually believes in the idea of making meaning
Lists the names of trees. Now that she is so much older
She understands all that she does as an artist that allows
Other artists to render her invisible. She
Is interested in how power works in her world. Why Cezanne
Wins every art brawl. Why his edges aren’t edges, why
The poet who says jacaranda wins and the poet who says
lilac loses … (21)

She acknowledges the dark side of living a creative life, of dedicating yourself to writing despite public accolades or “winning.” Particularly in this poem, she places this choice of creativity within a larger context of the seasons and the Iraq War, two alternate ways of marking the passage of time and the assignation of value. Art is valuable, but some art is more valuable. Life is valuable, but some lives are more valuable. She speaks up for the less valued in the world.

In another new poem, she writes of the need for “the beginning of a new art movement that would honor all that is small and precise.” (29) Her attention to the small and precise is evident throughout the book. In “Loving Motels,” from her 1995 collection Happiness, she accumulates all of the details of a motel stay – the phones and bathing suits and room service – and creates a collage of America. (176) In the mirrored poems “The Man Who Knew About Winter,” and “The Woman Who Knew About Winter”, from an earlier collection Household Wounds, she paints a portrait of a marriage in the details: a wife singing while making dinner, children mishearing song lyrics.

Before I started to read this book, I had hoped to uncover the trajectory of my teacher’s career, to find the line she has forged throughout her lifetime. Instead, I found a more cyclical arc. Willow Room, Green Door is arranged anti-chronologically. Her newest poems are followed by her oldest. This way, the consistency of Keenan’s vision and voice are highlighted. Certain themes recur throughout her work: wars (both new and old), living with family, the struggle to be good and faithful to yourself and your loved ones, and of course, a vital relationship with art. I think if writers strive for a daily practice, they should search out Deborah Keenan’s work, to see what a life lived through a creative lens looks like.

Keenan, Deborah. (2007). Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.