Wrestling with God: Review of The O in the Air

Maryann Corbett
The Catholic University of America Press, 2023; 112pp.;
$15 (paperback)

You Can’t Really Know Where You Are Going Until You Know Where You Have Been

In her most recent poetry collection, The O in the Air, Maryann Corbett embraces the wisdom of the late Maya Angelou: “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”

Corbett revisits the past to understand her place in the world and her relationship with God, confronting it with clear eyes, penetrating honesty, and relentless deliberation. Vulnerable and poignant, funny and bold, Corbett delves into memory, the ghosts of the past, and the impressions they leave behind. Like Jacob wrestling with God, Corbett grapples with what it means to live as a Catholic in the prevailing culture.

The O in the Air explores Corbett’s personal history, investigating the fabric of family life from the mid-twentieth century into the first quarter of the new millennium. It offers her own autobiographical experience as a source of contemplation, seeking the hand of God at work in our lives. Like many Catholics today, Corbett struggles with aligning her life with Church dogma. As Corbett explains in a recent interview:

“I never really stopped going back to those feelings of childhood. I want to get back to the difficulties I had with the Church and faith and my parents during my childhood and fix them and rebaptize them.”

Learning Through Story: The Importance of Revision

Corbett also recognizes that people learn through story. We derive meaning by constructing a narrative that explains the world around us, filling in gaps based on our experience, values, and worldview. However, when new information becomes available, we often discover that our understanding was wrong. We must revise our narrative to allow for a new meaning—and sometimes, a different ending—than what we first believed to be true.

The O in the Air is a comprehensive tour de force illustrating this conundrum through a Catholic lens. As Corbett discerns her relationship with God, she embarks on an inquiry and narrativization of her own past, deeply inspired by St. Augustine.

Opening Poem: "Back Story"

The opening poem, "Back Story", frames the collection’s narrative. In it, Corbett reflects on the tradition of panoramic pastoral paintings, where distant classical or biblical scenes are depicted in the background. She muses:

“What if the world you learned in flame and darkness / is apprehended only through these fancies? / What if the whole of it is heavenly?”

Corbett’s verse acknowledges the anguish of the world and the transcendent just beyond our grasp. She enlists the reader in her quest to search for God beyond the sensory world, where human experience is often marked by pain. She calls the Divine “the O in the air.”

A Journey Through Memory: Childhood, Motherhood, and Late Adulthood

The poet divides The O in the Air into three sections, glimpsing her memories of childhood, motherhood, and late adulthood. Through this journey, the reader experiences intimacy with Corbett, as though reading her personal journal. Like Augustine in the Confessions, Corbett lays bare her Catholic sensibility and the flaws of her sinful humanity in her quest for connection with the Divine. She explores recurring themes of unfulfilled dreams, the transitoriness of worldly things, and the willfulness of humanity in our encounters with the sacred.

Section I: Unfulfilled Dreams and the Harsh Reality

In Section I of The O, Corbett introduces the theme of unfulfilled dreams and the harsh reality that often crowds them out. For Corbett, these first dreams are those of her parents. In the opening poem, "Before", she reflects on an old photo of her parents as newlyweds:

“[T]hey stand together in front of their first house, / in eight-by-ten matte silence, black and white.”

This frozen moment contrasts sharply with the panoramic visions of “Back Story.” Corbett’s painstaking examination of these singular moments reveals the mystery of “the mist beyond the frame.”

In "Before", Corbett uses a schema of inquiry throughout the poem. First, she sets the scene with an image of a beautiful young couple on the brink of a new beginning, noting:

“Everything here is joyful.”

Then, she questions the scene:

“Like every couple in love, they are thoroughly lovely / so that you wonder, What happened?”

She presumes an answer:

“Not some dark catastrophe: You were what happened. / You, so deeply dreamed, made smiles disappear.”

Finally, she tests her presumption and observes what is left behind:

“What happens when we clench our fists on dreams: / Mistakes (you think, watching your children go).”

The result is a haunting, unresolved tension that creates a unified whole. Corbett does not pretend to have the answers but points her audience to the O in the air for them to discover how the story unfolds.

"Knowledge" and the Family's Hidden Secrets

In the poem "Knowledge", Corbett wrestles with the newly discovered truth about her mother’s secret lifelong source of shame: her first failed marriage that ended in divorce. Going through her mother’s personal belongings, Corbett finds a letter-sized accordion file that reveals the unknown story. She begins by confronting the unseen opponent—her mother's ex-husband—whom she taunts:

“Scumbag. I’d like to punch him in the face.”

She sets the scene for us: as an adult with grown children, her own family bickers upstairs during holiday festivities while she isolates herself in the basement, rummaging through her mother’s boxes. Then, she asks:

“Would it have made a difference if I had known— / A little girl in a fifties Catholic school?”

Corbett’s family life is complicated: her mother is a pious Catholic who cannot take communion because she lacks an annulment, while her father is a non-practicing Catholic with an open struggle with alcoholism. Corbett grows up guessing why her parents aren’t like those of her Catholic school friends, and she fills in the gaps with the simplest, most painful explanation: I am to blame.

The truth of her mother’s past shifts Corbett’s personal narrative, forcing her to reconcile the story she knew as a child with the one she discovers as an adult.

The Culmination of Corbett's Process: Revelation to Reconciliation

The O in the Air is the culmination of Corbett’s process, from revelation to reconciliation. Her writing, at times playful and always probing, produces a compelling work of subtle complexity. The result is a clear-eyed examination that asks difficult questions and accepts unforeseen answers with humility. Corbett searches for the elusive answer to the eternal question: Where is God in this sensory world where human experience is marked by so much pain?

As Corbett continues her search, she realizes Maya Angelou’s timeless wisdom: you must know where you came from before you can know where to begin.