Seven Bridges
Turning Adversity Into Victory
By Dessa Byrd Reed 

     If you think poets are all espresso-sipping black-costumed ghouls in berets, you haven’t met the vibrant “Line Dancing at the Bank” poet Dessa Byrd Reed, whose near-fatal automobile accident started her on the journey to poetry. Her first book, The Butterfly Touch: Recovery through Poetry, debuted in July 2000 and delighted audiences everywhere, especially in her native Palm Springs, California.

     Reed’s second book, Seven Bridges: Turning Adversity Into Victory, is somewhat of a departure from The Butterfly Touch. Like The Butterfly Touch, it contains Reed’s musings on poetry, but in this outing Reed equally intermingles poetry and prose, from an essay on changing politics and her affection for her blue-collar son-in-law to an intriguing history feature, followed by a poem, about Ruby Bridges, the first black child to be enrolled in an all-white school under court order in 1962. The poem reflects Reed’s style at its best: “Our six-year-old sacrifice/Carries no cross/No crown of thorns encircles/Her white-ribboned pigtails/No blood stains/Her store-bought dress”.

     Reed’s poetry is inventive, employing intriguing techniques, such as a critique group favorite, the use of seven specific words to create a poem. Dessa uses seven words to form two poems, “Indian Maiden” and “Indian Squaw,” which together make a pointed social commentary. Reed offers political/spiritual polemics such as “E-mail Propaganda,” an anti-gun anti-war message that asserts: “I know of only one cork big enough to plug/all the holes in the universe,/*Our Father which art in Heaven/Hallowed be Thy name…” The asterisk marks Reed’s invitation to budding poets to include their own lines giving a solution to global evil. She encourages the reader to be “a poet with a voice.” The book’s gentle writing tutorials continuously invite a dialogue between Reed and her poet readers in-between the seven metaphoric bridges.

     This reader very much enjoyed the section “Bridges to the Past,” especially the poem, “RFD,” told from the point of view of Reed’s grandmother Lily Briscoe and portraying the vanished social ritual known as the mail delivery in small-town America. Reed’s bridges of poetry and prose, built by her victorious spirit, take us to our own exciting destinations.