Book Review: What Was and Is—Formal Poetry and Free Verse by Theresa Werba

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Book Reviewed: What Was and Is—Formal Poetry and Free Verse,
by Theresa Werba, Bardsinger Books, April 2024

by James A. Tweedie

With What Was and Is—Formal Poetry and Free Verse, Theresa Werba (formerly known as Theresa Rodriguez) has gifted those of us who love formal poetry with a collection of her finest poems to date. Among the 118 poems can be found pantoums, terza rima, rondeaux, and Keatsian odes, as well as a few scattered examples of free verse. But it is through her 69 Sonnets that Werba truly shines while demonstrating that she is a modern master of this most expressive of all English poetic forms.

If Albert Schweitzer had not already taken it, this latest collection could well have been titled, Out of my Life and Thought, for the poems add up to a personal, introspective, and emotional autobiography of a life filled with tears, pain, grief, and disappointment; a life that, nonetheless, leads Werba to a hard-fought triumph attained by means of strength of will, a love of music, and a stubborn insistence that life is worth living.

Early on, in a sonnet titled, “My Journal,” Werba lets us in on what to expect:

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I put my mind to pen, and then impart
My soul’s outpourings through my mind, to start,
Then show my whole raw self with open face.

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And, again, in “A Formalist’s Delight,”

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I want to hear and know a poet’s heart,
Not just his head, but both in counterpart!

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Her poetry incorporates enjambment, allusion, and alliteration as she opens her “poet’s heart” in sharing the emotional stress of living through a series of failed relationships while struggling against a host of inner demons of the sort that many of us have no doubt faced in our own lives.

Her poetic description of her bed as a living metaphor for a place of shelter, comfort, and hope in the midst of her life’s storms is one that is easily relatable:

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When life has burdened me and robbed me of an easy way,
I’ve looked for succor, such as one can access every day;
A simple, sweet solution to the traumas of my mind;
A place where I can hide and heal, that’s never hard to find.
The antidote to what is past and thus what lies ahead:
I’ve found it in the comfort and the safety of my bed.

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Hope is also celebrated in “The Ability to Forget,” where she writes,

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Here, I propose a remedy,
a healthy way to move ahead,
before what’s done is set:
reliable for every need,
in outcome, it can be agreed,
this panacea’s guaranteed:
the ability to forget!

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But hope is also found in finding medication that did not have the side-effects of dulling her creativity, an event vividly celebrated in her Rondeau, “I’m Better Now,”

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Dark lowness that could bleed and kill,
hard emptiness, death, cold, and chill,
enchained; but now a change in me:
both poles subdued! Miraculously,
due to new pills, (and medical skill),
I’m better now.

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Next, in a series of reflections on historical and fictional characters who overcame suffering, she writes of “The Trial of Saint Joan of Arc,”

And although
You were unusual, your life would touch
Your countrymen and women, who would see
In you a budding saint, who saw and heard
The world of angels, seeking yet the voice
Of God above all others. Fervently
You tried to be obedient to His word
As you did know it, for this was your choice.

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And then, with expressive tenderness, Werba captures the redemption of Hugo’s famed hunchback, “Quasimodo,”

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It only took a single, cooling cup
Of water, but you drank with thankfulness;
And as La Esmeralda lifted up
Your sorry head, you looked with gratefulness
To one who chose a good deed on the day.
Oh, how this changed your lonely, saddened state
To gratitude and love from emptiness—
For now you loved her. Banished and away
All forms of mockery— a better fate
Because your form was touched by loveliness

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But never does the twinkle in Werba’s eye sparkle more brightly than it does when she writes in “Praise of My Piano.”

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The sweetness and vibrations that are clear
And resonant. The keys are to the feel
Responsive and receptive; to the ear
A satisfaction; beauty in ideal.
Miraculous in all its aural ways,
My Steinway’s panegyric: laud and praise!

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Followed shortly by an amusing dialogue with her “Neglected Piano,” which, as her Steinway points out,

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“I cannot make my music,”
(Gives its gentle reprimands)
“It’s all potentiality
Except for both your hands.

For all the works that you adore
Are locked inside of me,
Unless you come and open them:
Your fingers are the key.

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To which she replies,

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Lest I ignore its whispered call
I’ll, each and every day,
Thus satisfy the patient keys
And not neglect to play

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In “An Adoptee’s Reflection” Werba recalls a life without knowing who her birth parents were.

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I grew up always wondering about
The person that I really was—who were
These parents of biology? I doubt
I ever rested; how my thoughts would stir

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And then, in “What’s in a Name?” she celebrates when she recently discovered her birth parents and the missing heritage this discovery uncovered for her.

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No need to wonder anymore,
or science did bestow
the answer I’ve been searching for:
who am I? Now I know.

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And in “Last Evening’s Glance,” Werba is not afraid to look into a mirror and let us in on what she sees as she reflects on her own ageing.

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. . .  the eyes allow
A window to the soul. But it’s my face
That perturbs me and disturbs me anyhow!
Despite the wizening, a certain grace
Remains amid the wrinkled, aging skin.
For life will leave its scars and marks, and trace
The everywheres and places we have been
Upon our brows and cheeks.

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In the end, it is matters of faith that she finds to be the most challenging of all.vIn “One of the Four Last Things,” she boldly confronts God face to face:

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Unless you choose to choose me I can never follow you;
You must decide you want me so that I can want you, too;
Oh, pity, Lord! Oh, pity! May these salty bitter tears
Invoke salvation from your blood and stay my hell-fire fears!
For if you do not love me first, how can I then love you?
So Lord, I ask you: love me, so that I will love you, too;
I want a home in heaven and with you I want to dwell;
Oh, save me from the evil one, damnation and from hell!!!

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Along with her discovery of her birth parents comes a discovery of a Jewish heritage, which offers her new ways to seek and find not only God, but renewed meaning and purpose in her life. In “So Many Times,” she attempts to make sense of her new, exhilarating journey as she transitions between What Was and Is.

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For rule, and ordinance, dogma, verity,
Practice, tenet, doctrine, sacrament,
Custom, credo, ideology
Immix into a morass of dissent.
The only truths seem as I age to be
Devolving ever towards uncertainty

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And the whole concluding with “Baruch HaShem (Blessed Be the Name),” a sonnet celebration of the new path to faith she has now embraced as her own.

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You are the God who once did write in stone,
And now upon the human heart you burn
Your holy words and ways, so we might yearn
To seek, and yield, and weep, and pray, and moan.
Oh, Elohim, and Adonai, alone
You are the Lord. You cause the soul to turn
And seek your face and will, that one may learn
Such truths and treasures heretofore unknown.
Oh, I am heavy laden in my breast,
That you, oh El Shaddai, great Breasted-One,
Are not embedded in me. With my whole
Being I desire to be blessed
As Jacob was, not letting go, till done.
In this I know I have a Jewish soul.

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If you love good poetry, I encourage you to join Theresa Werba on her journey from darkness to light as she opens her “poet’s heart” and inspires us with What Was and Is.

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Theresa Werba the author of seven books, four in poetry: Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs (Bardsinger Books, 2015), Longer Thoughts (Shanti Arts, 2020), Sonnets (Shanti Arts 2020) and What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse (Bardsinger Books, 2024). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Spindrift, Mezzo Cammin, The Wombwell Rainbow, Fevers of the Mind, The Art of Autism, Serotonin, The Road Not Taken, and the Society of Classical Poets Journal. Find Theresa Werba at www.bardsinger.com and on social media @thesonnetqueen.

James A. Tweedie is the author of Mostly Sonnets and First Place Winner, 2021 Society of Classical Poets International Poetry Competition

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