Peggy Trojan
Judge’s Comments:
River, by Peggy Trojan. It is rare to find a poetic sequence that is as gripping as a novel. I was deeply moved when I finished Trojan's book, which is a close consideration of her husband's descent into dementia and death. Trojan writes spare, short poems in which every word counts. She resists easy sentimentality as she describes what it is like to watch her husband, an exuberant, extremely capable helicopter pilot, lose almost all his capacities. She remembers their past, their sexual intimacy, their deep bond. She calculates the loss. But there are gains, and even at the end there is a kind of triumph, in that he does not forget her: "Whenever you fell/you called my name," she says. which seems doubly poignant considering he was an airman. The river of the title becomes the framing device Trojan's collection. It is at once the Chippewa River, beside which they both lived, and the river Styx that flows between the living and the dead. "Stay on the river now," she says to her husband:
it will lead you to the sea.
Someday I will meet you there
with all those we have loved.
Listen, can you hear?
The river is singing .
This is a rare book of genuine feeling about love in the very jaws of death.
