Poetry Review: On the Lip of Night by Julie Esther Fisher

 

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” 

--Kahlil Gibran

There is definitely “a dash of the dictionary” in Julie Esther Fisher’s new collection, On the Lip of Night. I know this because I had to look up an occasional word. But while encountering these exceptional poems, I spent far less time with a reference book and far more being overwhelmed with the “joy and pain and wonder” of well-written verse.

The prodigious skill of this Pushcart-nominated poet is clear in her preface poem in which she encapsulates the simultaneous exaltation and limitations of childhood in four simple lines:

A girl on a swing

watches the shadow of her legs on asphalt

She travels like a pale pint of milk through the sky

on the creaking chains of childhood

Speaking of dairy products, “At the Hour of Milk” begins with the sadness (or fear) experienced by a group of cows when their farmer first utilized electricity in the barn. Not only did the bovines sense something intrinsically wrong when bright artificial light replaced the softness of early dawn, but as the poem progresses, Fisher notes that a precious human experience was also lost:

His boy used to join him in the barn

at the hour of milk

when sweetness

instinctive in both

called lip to dipper

and they tasted brightness.

Along with its beautifully portrayed pathos, “At the Hour of Milk” juggles images of light and darkness  with effortless brilliance. The buckets meant to capture the cow’s milk in the bright light are described as “deep black holes,” a color then compared to a line of ravens standing in a line “reaching the farm/like the new electricity.”

Fisher’s masterful ability to stretch a single metaphor through an entire poem is apparent in “Bone Mountain” where she describes a monastery as “an atlas bone holding up/the heavens.” The older people there, she says, are “already half fused into the mountain’s spine.” She wonders which of her bones she should “give to the gods” and ends the poem with these lines which suggest both weight training and death:

While I weight it out

The gossip I hear

the clack of so many femur bones buried

in the mountain

As the Gibran quote implies, poetry is often rooted in pain and this is most notably evident in “Masterclass” and “Hemlines,” poems that only hint at their source of suffering; Fisher’s meanings are often hidden within her beautiful lines and take more than a single reading to discern.

Not so with “Take My Breath Away” in which Fisher presents jarringly humorous images: the breath of ancient British Queen Boudicca crashes “through the traffic at Midtown” before she parks her chariot in the poet’s driveway where it is inspected by “the AAA guy” who “breathes new life into it.”

While tripping out on Fisher’s phenomenal imagery, it’s easy to overlook her skillful use of  assonance and consonance which makes her poems a great pleasure to read aloud, such as these lines from “Save the Date”:

I shrink myself into the darkness

of the little black dress.

Death zips me in.

A new companion, he does

for me, everything but

change his mind.

He cleans with me, pays my bills. Tells

jokes, his jaws a crowd of

tombstones.

And because of its internal rhyme, the following poem title is simply fun to say, especially if you( like me) have a Chicago accent: “The landlord is at the door”

Julie Esther Fisher is a prodigiously talented poet who handles the English language like an artist utilizes paint. Her experiences and interests are extensive and her ability to create connections with imagery is exceptional. Lovers of good poetry will find themselves reading and rereading the verses in On the Lip of Night as they seek to uncover the truth beneath each beautiful line.

Julie's website

Publisher's website

This review was published by the Midwest Book Review, MBR Bookwatch October 2026, Kathryn Atwood's bookshelf.