The Blessing Box by Maria Morrison: Poetic Descriptions of Lost Photos

The Blessing Box is a short collection of poetry that will capture your heart and take you on a journey through a woman's past in four dynamic parts. In reading The Blessing Box, you will find yourself walking alongside a young girl as she experiences the warm images of home and also the disturbing events found deeper in the body of work, and, eventually, you will find yourself standing by a woman as she observes the poetry found in the lives of others.

There is a photographic quality to Morrison's The Blessing Box that is both fantastic and realistic. Several of her poems in this collection actually incorporate the photograph device to describe past memories or to describe short, snapshot moments. A few of the poems actually capture a physical or emotional story in wording exactly like one might use to describe an actual photograph.

Two poems from the collection that appear to describe snapshots in history are "Constellations," which incorporates strong images to tell the events of one evening, and "Hours," which concerns physical photographs. Morrison's decision to use the photographic device makes the mundane solid and resounding. When, in "Constellations," Morrison concludes the work with questions, she also leaves another photographic moment; however, it is one with loose ends, forcing the reader to think of what happened after the poems end. "Hours" ends in a similar way, begging the reader to ask about the future photographs capturing the progression of abuse.

"The Blessing Box," the title poem of the collection, also comes across as photographic. If someone were to describe several photographs of the same objects at different times, one might find themselves with something similar to "The Blessing Box." "The Blessing Box" was divided into two parts and each part then broken into three separate poems, all of them different moments in time. Yet, all of them come together to form the makings of a tainted childhood.

It was in Part Four of The Blessing Box that the poems grew distant from the story of parents and childhood. While the poetry was as enlightening and entertaining as that found in the first three parts, Part Four's collection seemed to turn away from that past, to look at the outside world. The poem that distanced itself the most was "Sandy." In the collection, Sandy's identity is not clear and a poem fixated on Sandy seems to break away from the familiarity of the other poems, not fitting into the collection.

Morrison's work comes together like a stack of pictures in a photo box, all the poems separate but collaborating to form the same life filled with tragedy and, eventually, hope. Morrison was awarded the Starting Gate Chapbook Grant for The Blessing Box, and the poem "Before Dark" was a semi-finalist for The Emily Dickinson Award Anthology. The Blessing Box is available through Finishing Line Press and can be bought at Amazon or www.finishinglinepress.com for $14.