Sundress Reads: Review of If Only There Were Stations of the Air

If Only There Were Stations of the Air (Sheila-Na-Gig Press, 2024), Judy Kronenfeld’s sixth poetry collection, aims high—exploring love and loss, loneliness and vulnerability, and what it means to be alive. In a beautiful, transcendent poetic voice, Kronenfeld’s speaker both embraces and struggles against our all-too-human fragility. Nevertheless, from within this work emerges a call to live your life today.

Much of this collection was composed during the Covid-19 lockdowns. The first half reflects this and is pervaded by a deep sense of isolation magnified by the speaker’s illness. “Together,” a short poem detailing the speaker’s days spent recovering surgery, communicates an understated alienation:

“You share my room 
three nights in the surgical ward,
sleeping awkwardly
on a foldout chair, as I doze
in my opiate-quieted bed—
the soothing arm’s reach
between us all the sweetness
we can know.” (Kronenfeld 35)

“Together” encapsulates of the omnipresent theme of isolation: at arm’s length from others, unable to reach across the gap. Although Covid-19 is only mentioned by name a few times, its specter haunts this collection.

Just as she does in “Together,” Kronenfeld roots the affective in the body throughout this collection, breaking down barriers between soma and psyche. We are not just together; we are as gauze and skin. In “Anticipation” Kronenfeld writes:

“In the dawn chill, in the too-quiet
late afternoon, separation waits.
I will rush from our bed or my desk
to find you first—working the crossword
at the breakfast table, or pulling dandelions
in the yard as the light fails. I will wrap myself
to you close as gauze to heal the inescapable
rift—make us two birds fellable
with one stone.” (55)

The embodiment of the affective in If Only There Were Stations of the Air is a tacit endorsement of our status as living, animal beings. Try as we might, we cannot ignore that we are alive and dying as all other animals are. Presented side-by-side, these poems become a dialectic of isolation and togetherness: the unbearable opiate-sleep of solitude, the vulnerability of togetherness. Through this tension, Kronenfeld reveals the vulnerability and woundedness at the heart of the human experience.

At times, Kronenfeld embraces this fragility as an important part of being human, as something we must accept so that we can accept living. If we are lucky to alive, then maybe we are lucky to be vulnerable. In “8th and 9th Decade,” Kronenfeld writes, “pieces of cotton wool to stuff in her nostril. / She might think: so this is how / our lives begin to come undone. But / what she thinks is: Oh my God we’re so lucky (49).” While discussing the fragility that comes with age, Kronenfeld finds reason for hope: we are lucky to experience this. We are lucky to be alive, to not have died young, to grow old with others by our side.

Kronenfeld is not always so positive, of course. In “Theft”, Kronenfeld’s speaker mourns that vulnerability (this time, to physical pain) so often pushes us apart “Now we sleep, / avoiding pain, / at outposts / of our spacious bed— / each wrapped in ancient / loneliness (47).” Living is not always easy, and our fragility so often is heralded by pain.

Kronenfeld grapples with something very fundamental in this collection: how are we to keep living? How do we go on, knowing there will be pain with every joy? These questions have me returning, over and over, to this section from the first poem in this collection, “Flowers growing in timelapse to music:”

“All the blind plants busy
as an orchestra playing
prestissimo, almost fast enough
for my mortal eye to imagine
cotyledon to stunning blossom
known all-at-once
in timeless Mind—the barrier
of becoming, broken.
As if there were
an instant plan
for everything natural,
and it was perfectly
beneficent.” (Kronenfeld 12)

There might not be an answer to the questions above. If there is, it isn’t an easy answer, nor a singular answer. Nevertheless, there is an undeniable beauty to the world. If Only There Were Stations of the Air is both a cry against the constant march of time, and a celebration of the beauty life holds regardless. “Flowers growing in timelapse to music,” to me, feels like a love song for life’s unknowable and sublime movements, for our ability to find meaning in the small things.

If Only There Were Stations of the Air is a collection that continues to come back to me, imploring me to find beauty in life while it lasts. There is a transcendental beauty to this collection, one best felt by reading it for oneself. It is a work that both affirms and retreats from life, both worldly and ethereal in one. Most certain, however, is that it was a wonderful spring break read, perfectly suited for afternoons spent beneath the blooming dogwoods and winter-hardened cedars of my native Middle Tennessee.

If Only There Were Stations of the Air is available from Sheila-Na-Gig Press

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Natalie Gardner is a trans writer hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee. She is currently pursuing a BA in English with a minor in philosophy from the University of Tennessee. She loves transgressive fiction, hiking, and schlocky, B-tier horror movies. When she isn’t working, you can find her haunting the coffee shops of Fort Sanders and DIY shows across East Tennessee. Her work in the field of linguistics can be found in Feedback Review in Second Language.