For an adventurous life enriched with fond and poignant memories of the old days and vivid and humorous expressions about transplanting to Louisiana, we need to look no further than Elizabeth Burk’s Unmoored, published by Texas Review Press in November 2024. This poetry collection invites us to travel with the poet from New York to other parts of the world and her new home base in the South. Like a charming tour guide, Burk builds rapport with the reader with a distinctive voice that maintains her tone and style throughout this book.

Weaved with memories, Unmoored showcases specific experiences enriched with powerful images that engage the senses. It doesn’t make judgments but offers insightful reflections to evoke strong emotions in the readers with lasting impressions or flashbacks that convey a feeling to “want our old lives back” (“Many Mysteries”). She remembers those girlhood days when she and her little friend went straight after school for the candy shop “where [she] stood for hours / in front of the comic book racks reading // Tales from the Crypt and True Romance / till the sun started down…” (“Dyckman & Broadway”). This coming-of-age story presents a vivid childhood memory, whether it is mischief made by the girls:

Weekends we played stickball
in the narrow streets, a broken broom handle

for a bat, slammed pink Spalding balls
parked cars and buildings—at the crash
of glass breaking we took off running.

a playtime in the street at night:

At night, when parents slept, we left again
through the window, climbed down the fire escape,
wandered the neighborhood at midnight
soaking up the silent streetsl we now owned.

“Catechism” memorizes an occurrence about challenging religious prejudice and exploring the possibility for mutual understanding though the Catholic kids bully the first-person narrator for killing Jesus. Unassured by what her mother said, the girl starts to explore self-acceptance for a state of being “forgiven all sins” with the desire to confess:

A playmate led me on a furtive excursion
through massive wooden doors—inside,

overpowering incense, echo of bells and organs,
solemn swish of black robes. A chorus of celestial voices
swelling in unison filled a hollow in my chest--

structure steeped in ritual—compelling, seductive,
it beckoned. Holy, holy, holy. I borrowed
rosary beads, learned to chant.

Yet, “What the hell is this?” Her father’s question barks like a negation to her religious understanding or exploration when he finds the rosary beads “on the bathroom sink tangled up / in his razor and shaving cream.” The conflict continues without resolving the issue of “nonsense.” This flashback touches on religious disharmony with concrete descriptions, awakening our senses to her spiritual exploration and emotional experience.

“Afterlife” is a tender poem about a sisterhood with spiritual and emotional ties. The poem begins with a confession that the first-person narrator never believes in afterlife and then naturally leads the reader into a visual experience of bereavement hallucinations. A week after her sister dies, the narrator sees her “floating above me, reclining / on her side, her head propped on one arm / looking as she did twenty years ago // before age and illness ransacked / her body.” This vision is the result of intense grief over the loss owing to the strong emotional attachment to the sister. Through the replay of fond memories of the sister “relaxing and smiling, / dressed as usual in jeans, a sweater, / golden-brown hair framing her face,” the narrator gains a healing moment, so she envisions a soulful communication with her dead sister:

I had been dancing to music, waving my arms
in the air. When our eyes met, she leaned over
and extended her arm, reaching down as if
to grasp my hand. Not to pull me up to her,

nor for me to pull her to the earth,
but just to comfort me, letting me know
she was at peace and would be waiting
whenever I was ready to join her.

Writing poetry from the first-person point of view, Burk creates a sense of immediacy with her personalized experiences. Poem after poem, Burk presents a chain of lively and mysterious moments: a blueberry muffin, a woman with long dark frizzy hair, a taste of love, a hand in the skirt, a floating on the Dead Sea, a map of the Soviet Union on the kitchen wall, a discussion between the parents about revisiting the Soviet Union, an abortion in a foreign country, and many other episodes.

Burk’s poems are filled with vivid images. Well-crafted visual descriptions throughout Unmoored show her creativity in using figurative language, like “we bathed / in the sauna of our own sweat, fans / of folded newsprint our ocean breeze” (“Tar Beach”), or aging as “a broken-down car in the dead of night / in the midst of a cross-country odyssey, / no repair shop in sight” (“Is Your Present Condition Due to an Accident”). Burk is also humorous. The southern image of watermelon used to compare to a lover in “Making Love with a Southern Boy” naturally creates a sense of humor. When the narrator asks why she is compared to watermelon, the southern boy responds with a double entendre, “Honey, / it just means / I’m thirsty.”

The title poem is a favorite one about transplanting to the South, showing Burk’s skills in using figurative language and contrast to create a space for imagination. The poem begins by stating that the heart traveling between the two lands tries to find a place to moor or “drop anchor.” The narrator realizes that the South is a “safe haven” that allows the body to stay “in a cathedral space, holy shoulders / of an open loft, no place to hide, to see itself.” Maybe the South has the healing power where one is part of oneness. The choice of words, like haven, cathedral space, and holy shoulders, reveals the poet’s sense of the place and indicates her preference or acceptance of it as the home where she can enjoy life or find peace in nature, as shown in these lines: “my heart plays Cajun fiddle, dances, drinks, / parties day into night, or rests on the deck gazing / at turtles, carp inhaling green streamers of pond grass.” In contrast to the warm Southern heat that provides comfort, the snow-covered New York where her heart “is a cello / playing solo” offers a view of loneliness: the narrator sits “alone on [her] suede sofa, surrounded by corners / of rooms that contain” herself. Being in such a lonely situation makes her heart “longing for the other” while wishing to expand “with the blessing of privacy.” This psychological torture of being pulled by the two lands ends with a question, “Where / to moor my heart, which once loved to wander, now aches / for one anchor to weather the waves of old age” (“Unmoored”). Again, the reader hears Burk’s humorous voice through her description of the cat which wants to claim the narrator’s comforting space, “wakes me / with whiskers tickling my face, whispers move over.”

A major theme threading through Unmoored is the moving to Louisiana, which functions as a symbol of nature and peace. There are other humorous poems about the narrator’s transplanting experience. In “He Visits Me,” the narrator offers a sweet scene when her lover, who “spoons into [her] mouth / a roux rich and redolent with spice,” says, “Come to Louisiana, babe…and I’ll cook for you forever.” Though her mouth “is always ready for more,” the narrator feels undecided since she is a “set-in-stone city girl, / raised by skyscrapers, wary / of wide-open spaces…” However, in “Deciding to Marry,” the narrator, after putting her New York house on the market, gives a vivid description of nature by watching birds through the window in the home in Louisiana:

We watch the birds swoop for seed,
the birdhouse a battleground, a tiny swinging stage
where a fierce chickadee holds sway, chases away

blue-jays, sleek catbirds. A squirrel scampers
up the pole in a futile quest for food, only to lose
his balance at the top, slide to the ground.

We laugh as the squirrel limps away—he’ll be back.
Next it will be fox, raccoon and the groundhog
who lives under the deck, coming to dine.

Unmoored shows good poetry functions with powerful images, evocative emotions, and insightful reflections on human experiences. Through her vivid narration, Burk offers moments of visual experiences that leave a lasting and empathetic impression on the reader. Poems in four sections explore the self, family, love, and community through an awareness of the self. They lift open layers of identity to form a complete picture of the self. Burk is a psychologist, and her professional specialty should have equipped her with the ability to recognize the identity of the self and helped her poetry writing. Her genuine narration reflects the emotional depths of the self and human beings; it also creates a sense of presence and immersion that urges you to drop your anchor for an emotional resonance.