Reasonable Doubts by Mary K Stillwell

Clustered around the stabbing murder of two women in a Quaker meeting house, the poems in this stunning collection propel the reader forward through “Clues and Certainties” while simultaneously calling for a slowing of inquiry and judgment to the speed of stillness, to silent contemplation. In ways no legal argument could attempt, Stillwell’s poems probe the secrets, not only of guilt and innocence, but also of racial and ethnic histories, and, indeed, of life itself: “I do not know precisely, /” the speaker muses, “what this Light within means, / but gone from the body, so are we.” In simple, astonishing language, these quietly beautiful poems call on us to reach for mercy over vengeance, for an understanding that probes more deeply than “[c]onventional wisdom,” which “prepares us/ for nothing.” In a time when simplistic slogans, swift judgments and rash rhetoric prevail, poems like those found in Reasonable Doubts are nothing short of crucial.

–Judith Sornberger, author of Practicing the World and I Call to You from Time

Mary K. Stillwell’s extraordinary new collection, Reasonable Doubts, meditates on the murder of two women in the residence above a Quaker meetinghouse—probing, as it does, the limits of evidence and knowledge, as well as the elusive possibility of racial justice.  The women were white, the convicted murderer—a cousin and friend—was Native American. The persona of the author composing the book we are reading is both restless and reasoned in her quest for certitude and she uses the creative imagination as an instrument of discovery. The “silence” and “Light” of the meeting house provide a leitmotif, and flowers become a brilliant counterpoint to the darkness and blood of the crime: “forsythia dons / yellow slickers and the apple tree sprouts sin”; “jonquil, red tulip, hyacinth, / all the fragrant gospels // blooming.” When the persona breaks into song in the final poem—a song as astonishing as sudden speech in a meetinghouse—we are transported to a place in which we might live immersed in natural beauty, where “there can only be praise.” On your feet, readers. Mary K. Stillwell’s Reasonable Doubts deserves your praise.

–Clif Mason, author of Knocking the Stars, Senseless and From the Dead Before