Claudia Emerson’s Secure the Shadow: Poems is a powerful collection of poetry about the universal human experience of life, death, and our attempts to find order in chaos. It is a poignant examination of grief, loss and the fragility of life.
Secure the Shadow reflects on the cycle of life and death after the 2003 death of Emerson’s father. Through her poetry, Emerson exercises her grief and religious beliefs, and contemplates mortality, often including the beauty and humbling details of the funeral service.
Her work explores the paradox of living each day with full knowledge that death can come any time, but also with a simultaneous desire to remain alive and deny death, as if it will never reach us. In “A Shroud Around Us”, the narrator contemplates being undisturbed by the outside world, while exploring the inevitability of death. Emerson also contemplates the language associated with death and attempts to purge the “shadow words and phrases” of death, such as “the deceased,” “the departed,” and “the end”.
The title is taken from the poem of the same name, in which Emerson muses about how humans attempt to solidify and immortalize memory with artifacts such as photographs and clothing. She asks if such attempts actually secure the shadow, or if the physical remains are a stand-in for our inability to completely hold on to life and the fleeting moments that make it beautiful and unique.
In "Photograph at The Wake”, Emerson reflects on a photograph taken at her father’s wake service, noting that his body had already been embalmed and displayed, yet his spirit and the energy of his life had already left. We are reminded of our mortal transience, as we try to secure the shadow of a departed memory or replace a loved one.
Emerson’s work provides comfort and consolation as it gives readers permission to feel as well as to grieve. Throughout the collection, the poet meditates on sorrow, pain, hope, and the mysterious process of death.
Secure the Shadow offers a poignant reflection on grief, finality, and the beauty of life even in the midst of sorrow. Emerson invites us to contemplate the cycles of life and death, and encourages us to find solace in the power of remembrance, even if it’s hard to keep the memories secure.
