When some hears the words blue moon, often what comes to mind is the song “Blue Moon” as sung by Billy Holiday and Frank Sinatra, or “Blue Moon of Kentucky” by Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. Perhaps one of these classics influenced Ted Olson for a title of his new collection of poems.
Be that as it may, Ted Olson is a Grammy-nominated producer whose focus is on music in his home region of Southern Appalachia, where he has worked as a naturalist, a park ranger and a professor at East Tennessee State University. Of the poems in this collection, none other than Robert Morgan writes: “Ted Olson’s poems find a way between menace and mystery, acknowledging the impact of the past on the present, and gifts of recognition in the lifelong search for a home. The poems celebrate discoveries of the extraordinary in unlikely places and moments, which are the heart of poetry.”
I was immediately especially struck by poems like “Unkind,” “Summer of 74,” Mantra,” “Human Nature,” and “Scientist” for the prominent activist voice that speak out to major social power structures on cultural and political issues.
In “Unkind,” speaking outright of present-day politics and politicians, Olson writes with line-ending rhymes “With faith as a tool / they’ll craft their state of lies. / You, naturally selected/by accident of birth, / should know ...you won’t be protected / in their heaven-on-earth.”
In the poem “Summer of 74,” Olson extrapolates on the theme of political indulgence, citing his younger years as a student and the foibles inherent in the nation’s capital, in lines like, “I should have been fearful … but I did not see dangers or dark views; / I could not understand or care, back then, / about power, lies, the misdeeds of creeps.”
Moving further into the collection we arrive at the poem “Mantra,” where Olson’s focus shifts some to the youthful memory of his life-changing experience from the voice of his family’s Baptist preacher and “His warning of where souls would go when dead / His fiery sermon, bolstered with shoddy logic, / his voice cracked when judging souls unworthy/to be saved… And I believing, right or wrong, / I‘d make my way alone, just be a fool / in someone else’s story. My mantra / from then onward: Night is short. Days are long.” From Olson’s mantra, we move on deeper in the collection to the short three-line haiku poem titled “Human Nature.” Here, we have Olson, the psychologist, giving us his own experiential expertise on the subject: “Some birds gather things / that glitter—and display them. / We hide what we find.”
As we approach the end of Blue Moon, we find the poem “The Scientist.” Here, Olson gives us another of his rhyming gems to drive home the point of a probable negative future by flipping destiny for an unlikely yet positive outcome. “After countless questions we still had to ask: / ’Must we suffer so?’ Nature’s curt answer: ‘Yes,’ / You, deaf to doubt, heard ‘No’ and took on the task / to save the species from a predestined mess. / Through painstaking experimentation and / a little luck, you fashioned the formula / that broke the code programmed by an unseen hand, / you flipped the future, using Death’s spatula.”
Finally, we arrive at “Blue Moon,” which is the final poem in the book. We find Olson’s summation of our current situation on planet Earth by focusing, literally, on the phases of the moon and our relationship to it. Again, this time in his signatory style of rhyming, we get the author’s last words of observation and advice. “Men came to you,” he writes, “and took what they sought, left / trash; they never returned. / Perhaps reflected rays / might inspire our tragic- / turned-comic consciousness / to heed Time’s reprimands? / Meanwhile, I’ll fix my eyes / and brain on your magic / rise from a cosmic mess.”
Here we have Olson’s plea of gratitude to the moon for help for our human future as well as for the future of a feminine Earth planet itself. So, in the end, what we have is, in fact, a love song to the moon in the voice of recording artist Ted Olson rather than that of Frank Sinatra, Billy Holiday or Bill Monroe.
I should mention that there are other valuable entries in this collection that reflect upon personal stories and histories that are “gifts of personal recognition,” as stated by Robert Morgan in his assessment of this book. For all of this and as readers, we owe Ted Olson our gratitude not only for his honesty, but for his willingness to be vulnerable in sharing his heart’s response to this unique and dangerously awkward time.