Inner Verses

Pam Rehm’s Inner Verses opens with an epigraph from Paul Klee, “One eye sees, the other feels.” Rehm’s poems possess a similar duality: they closely observe the slightest movements, such as “A vale of close light” or “a rain puddle / quivering,” while also capturing the weightier feelings that pass by quietly. From “Confirmation”:

I have lived as of late 
unpracticed

My faith essentially 
eroded

I am possessed now with 
duration 

Rehm’s eyes are trained on what often goes unnoticed—feelings seemingly inconsequential to a mind at work, or a life being lived, which she traces meticulously in short lines. The frequent spacing between stanzas gestures toward something being exhumed. From “A Construction,” dedicated to Keith Waldrop:

The underneath mind 
growing more and more 
quieted

By liminal attachments 
By a self-gathered credo

As the remedial force

The poet is transfixed by 
what is not

apparent 
Beneath notice

The internal dialogue 
Ecstasy or torture?

In “Bowing to Forces Infinitely Greater,” Rehm focuses her attention on time itself, attempting to disentangle it from the limitation of human perception:

We’re caught in this trap

Of linear time 
always getting tied 
to perspective

Surely, a genuine devotion lapses

Today and tomorrow 
quietly revolve 
untutored 

In “Spiritual Life,” the speaker describes being led to safety by their children, who are imbued with a special capacity for attention—a power to read signals more clearly than others. It’s possible that the children of this poem aren’t children at all, but the subconscious thoughts that Rehm is keen to uncover, here and throughout this book:

They saw further 
than sheltering

They heard clearer 
than any prayer

[…]

They held me tighter 
than any grip