FLYING: Trapeze Poems by Lillo Way
Reviewed by Lisa Ashley
 As I sat reading FLYING: Trapeze Poems by Lillo Way, I was lifted high into the Big Top where I mentally enacted my childhood dreams of being able to fly. By the end of the book, I still wasn’t ready to come back to ground. The eye-catching chapbook, handstitched in red thread, features a 1895 poster of Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth. Brightly costumed figures swing from trapeses and are caught in mid-flight. This slender volume will be a standout on any bookshelf. The 22-poem book holds the story of Lillo Dillon, grandmother and namesake of the poet. Lillo Dillon, along with her brothers, Elspa and Echo, comprised the top-billing aerial act known as “The Flying Dillons”. From opera houses on the Continent to tents on America’s Great Plains, we journey through Lillo Dillon’s life in these fascinating poems replete with the sounds (the cacophonous clang of rigging), smells (Even after bathing, [Alphonse] radiates the faint scent of his big cats), sights (Alicia colors the hair by which she will hang, twirling, tonight) and tastes (the [children] with a cone of popcorn and the ones / who only dream of eating what they smell) found both in the tent and on the backlot. The reader is utterly transported. The chapbook is cleverly bookended with a Prologue by a narrator, in which we are introduced to the trapeze artist in the most succinct summary of a life I’ve ever read, and an Epilogue imagining defiance and triumph from the aerialist after she has left the body. Along the way, using masterful persona poems, we learn about Dillon’s love of audience applause, the challenges of life on the road, and one day, her inevitable retirement. Taught by her father, Lillo Dillon learned to walk on a tightrope at three, and at four she is a mythical, celestial, / unpinioned trapeze god, / all flex and pump, all sweep / and swing. Look! / They’ve trained me to fly--a metaphorical summation of this lyrical narrative collection. We read about long hours of grueling training, the excitement and adrenaline of performing for the crowds, the death-defying injuries, the constant travel by train, and daily life in the circus camp. We journey with Dillon as she falls in love with, and marries, the master equestrian, and has six children: I train my eldest children to the high wire, / a family novelty act with tutus and parasols. When we reach the poem titled Descent, we find a poignant summation of Dillon’s dawning awareness of the changes in her life and in the world of the circus: Our dinner served from huge stained pots / in the shabby food tent of a third-rate circus / my children sitting on overturned buckets. / In all their memories, they are hungry. The children are hungry, yes, and so am I, for more delicious poems like these. I’d like to go on flying with Lillo Dillon and Lillo Way. Luckily, I can re-read these musical poems—full of magnificent imagery that tell the story of an extraordinary woman—whenever I want to fly again. Purchase today at redbirdchapbooks.com  LILLO WAY's latest book is FLYING: Trapeze Poems from Red Bird Chapbooks, 2024. Way's poetry collection, Lend Me Your Wings, is described by Ellen Bass as “rich in music and in imagination…a celebration and a joy”. Her chapbook, “Dubious Moon” won the Hudson Valley Writers Center/Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems have won the E.E. Cummings Award and a Florida Review Editors’ Prize. Her writing has appeared in such journals as New Letters, Poet Lore, Tampa Review, Louisville Review, Poetry East, and in many anthologies. Way has received grants from the NEA, NY State Council on the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for her choreographic work involving poetry. www.lilloway.com LISA ASHLEY, MDiv, is a Pushcart Prize nominee who descends from Armenian genocide survivors. She has spent many years listening to and supporting incarcerated youth. Her first book, Oubliettes of Light, was a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award 2024, and will be published in May 2025. Poems can be found in Willows Wept Review, Juniper, Blue Heron Review, The Healing Muse, Amsterdam Quarterly, Gyroscope, Thimble, Last Leaves and others. She writes in her log home among the firs on Bainbridge Island, WA, having found her way there from rural New York by way of Montana and Seattle. She earned a BA in journalism from the University of Montana School of Journalism, and a Master of Divinity from Seattle University. |