[...]

Her [Mara Bergman's] approach is very subtle and at times might provoke a response that perceives what she writes as prose. Certainly that was true for me at first as I struggled to connect with some of the poems. But after a while the true value contained within the writing was released for me and I began to hear the poems clearly. What is required from the reader is to listen very carefully to the underlying cadences Bergman expertly creates and which become more and more evident with each re-reading and finally hypnotic and spell binding.

An example of a poem that is firmly embedded in prose is 'East 13th Street or How I Met My Husband'. It would definitely raise the hackles of traditionalists because of its chatty tone, beginning with these lines:

However, what grounds the poem is the accumulation of such detail into an affirmative climax. Its value has been recognised through being awarded a Troubadour prize. While it is not the strongest poem in the collection, it has a function within the architecture of the book as a whole, along with other poems of a lower lyrical intensity, grounding the more sublime poems with a foundation.

Apart from the tonal qualities of her work, Bergman also exhibits a skill with visual imagery. Ekphrastic responses occur throughout the collection, particularly in a suite of six adroit poems concerning the generic figure of a photographer. There is also a brilliantly realised poem in homage to the painter, Edward Hopper, which fully captures the mood of Hopper's paintings:

As a corollary to this focus, the trope of light is recurrent, and often occurs as a structural device:

The sense of a poet who paints with words is made explicit in the dazzling poem which closes the collection, 'Painting England', which works like an Impressionist painting and ends with these lines:

From the evidence of The Disappearing Room, Mara Bergman is a lyrical poet with considerable gifts, a poet who deserves an ever widening readership.