Beauty Eases Pain in Judy Jordan’s Poetry Collection “Hunger”

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” – Muriel Rukeyser

Poetry collection “Hunger” by Judy Jordan (Tinderbox Editions, 2018) is an honest, intimate account of a woman and her pain. The speaker in the poems faces homelessness after an accident that injured a spinal disk in the small of her back. When the hospital bills became too expensive and she fell behind on payments, the hospital seized the narrator’s bank account. Every dollar to her name is given to the hospital, leaving the woman alone, impoverished and homeless. She goes into the forest where she lives in an abandoned greenhouse, with hordes of plants and insects for Jordan to describe in detail. Our speaker is injured and unable to provide for herself, breeding a physical and spiritual hunger.

Jordan uses the protagonist’s unique situation as a playground for poetry and imagery, giving us thick, clamoring descriptions to guide us through this chaotic situation. Poverty, starvation, injury, isolation, botany, animals, nature, politics—there are no limits to the subjects that Jordan illuminates. One common theme throughout the poems is the community of nature. She never describes one animal or plant but sees nature as an intertwined society working together, reacting synchronously to the environment as a whole. Between these environmental descriptions and the unraveling background of the protagonist, one begins to better appreciate the beauty of the greenhouse and the protagonist’s relationship to her surroundings. Jordan creates a living, breathing setting for the reader to explore, through her accessible yet intricate landscape.

When Jordan writes, she catches the reader by surprise—one minute the words flow as they describe this splendor, and then you read a single, searing line that catches your eye. The work is profound while our speaker remains humble, directing the reader’s attention to lush imagery, telling us to focus on the beauty of the words rather than their author.

Jordan also plays with the classics; poems are titled “Io” and “Prometheus.” These are names from Greek mythology, and although the poems (according to my interpretation) followed one scattered story line, Jordan’s reference to Io is intentional. Io was a human admired by Zeus for her physical beauty, although Io rejected his initial attempts at seduction. Eventually, the two began an affair, and when Zeus’ wife Hera found out, Hera turned Io into a cow. This led to Io’s ultimate isolation and demise, a state that the protagonist of “Hunger” often finds herself in.

Although the pain and suffering of this character seem like the essential themes of “Hunger,” Jordan remembers to feed us the stunning words that we are hungry for. After all, they ease our pain. It seems as if Jordan wants us to relate to the injured character, to see her as a metaphor for life. Sure, we all feel pain and no matter the magnitude, it still hurts. Instead of focusing on all that has gone wrong, Jordan focuses on the beauty in the pain. This seems simple enough, but Jordan’s poetry is too complex to be so easily deciphered.

The entire collection is beautifully written, gripping and deep. The only way to discover how viscerally you will react is to pick up your copy and dive in.

Shane Hoyle, Staff Writer.