A review by Peter Mladinic’s – Peter’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.

Taken as a whole these poems are a love letter to and about a mother. They mourn, celebrate, and dream. They give dignity to a life in words that wore dignity in the flesh. In these poems, Christine Tabaka gets her mother back.  Her mother walks through the door of her heart because the poet has opened that door. Tabaka evokes a shared life, the life of a mother and daughter, by her manipulation of sight, sound, and sense.

     We were flesh before we tore.

     The womb calls us to rejoin.

    At the heart of this love letter in poems is the question, Who are we?  One answer is found in things the mother and daughter share in “The Button Tin.”  The  mother saves buttons from “an old dress or shirt” in the tin, from which the daughter takes buttons, uses them to make puppets, jewelry, and art. The tin is a joyful memory, serving a utilitarian purpose for the thrifty mother, then an artistic purpose for the daughter. In “Our Playhouse” imagination takes precedence. The poet says, “We were cowboys, soldiers/ teachers, knights, and kings,” and she suggests her mother was close by. Her mother is more prominent in “Dashboard Jesus.”  The poet says, “She was fifty when she learned to drive. Her car, “a blue cracker-box / Renault…gave her new freedom. Saturday confession./ Sunday Mass.” Lastly, there is this togetherness;  towards the end of her mother’s life, the poet says, “You stared out the window./ I held your hand.”

   Sound is central in understanding “who we are.”  In “Last Wish” the third line’s “amethyst” resonates with the preceding line’s “wish” to evoke a subtle slant rhyme, a partial resolution, that, along with the first stanza’s diction, initiates strong emotions sustained right to the end. The sense is in the sound.

     Lilacs on her grave

     my mother’s last wish

     an explosion of amethyst 

     emerging from her heart

“Last Wish” is about being half of one whole; mother and daughter are one, here as in other poems. In “I Remember Her” the first three lines, “I remember her/ standing there/ outstretched arms of love” are repeated at the end, to evoke a statuesque reverence, the mother, the holy mother beckoning her children to enter her embrace.  In the middle, the poet’s mother prays quietly, persistently, the strength of her faith evoked in occasional rhymes, “there” and “prayer” and the slant rhyme of “existence” and “unnoticed.”  This poem is a good example of the idea that power involves restraint.  More could be said, but the poet holds back, leaving the reader to join in, in “I Remember Her” to come in to the motherly embrace.  The power of memory is in the sound of the daughter’s voice and in her mother’s “whispered prayer.”

     “Tears,” the book’s first poem, consists of two stanzas:  past and present, mother and daughter,  tears of sorrow, tears of joy. In the first stanza there is the line “to comfort me,”

and in the second, “My mother’s words.” The metaphor, the rain is tears of angels, was something a mother told a child.  Really it’s the central metaphor in this book.  In the poem the poet says “I felt so lost/ I felt so lonely.”  But the poem does not end in despair; it does not end in mourning a loss but rather in celebrating a life.  Yes, while absence, emptiness, and loss are faced head on, ultimately celebration takes precedence.  

    This book is about being a daughter, and in it, the poet’s mother is depicted not as saintly, but with great strength character and an unassuming, astonishing beauty.  A real woman living in a real world. In the world of the poem, the poet-daughter gets her loving mother back; mother and daughter are one, united in art as they once were in life.

     For Love of You is an uplifting book; it evokes a daughter’s love for her mother in skillfully crafted poems.