It's been such a long time since I've workshopped anything, I'm not totally sure what kind of feedback I'm looking for. I guess I'll just say that I'm working on a first book MS, that I'd like to eventually publish, so I'm trying to make these poems as strong as possible. Whatever that means! If there's something working, let me know! If there's something that feels loose or dead or unhelpfully unclear... let me know! Thank you, very excited about being with you.
IN KANSAS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING FLYING THROUGH
THE AIR
A lone glove. Clumps of cottonwood fluff.
Geese in a snowstorm. On Valentine’s Day,
a foil heart balloon, swept free and
rising.
Great spools of dickcissels
unending along the highway;
a thousand birds in mesmerizing undulations as far as the eye can
see.
In the fall, huge billowing dust
along the interstate. At
first you think fire,
then spot the farm truck trundling down the gravel access
road.
In Atchison today, a chemical leak—let’s call it a release.
Sulfuric acid and sodium hypochlorite
combine to create a chlorine cloud. Citizens shelter in place.
Inside the college bars and the one pho joint,
the TVs are all playing basketball. Oil droplets from the fryers
glow in the television’s purple flicker.
A ground fog materializes in spring, so thick the traffic app
pings to warn me.
I slow and dip into its blinding shimmer
where the highway passes through its depressions.
Leaving home in the mornings, I fix myself in space
by the airborne twin posts of my commute’s departure gate:
The coal plant’s vast steam, to the north, and the phosphorus
plant's thinner trails, to the east.
I note them both; I steer off along
the interstate.
Hi Dargie! This poem's strength for me lies in its utterly original landscape and in the specificity of its observations. I really like the title. A favorite image: 'Oil droplets from the fryers/glow in the television's purple flicker.' This sense of a traditional lifestyle superseded by the modern, chemical and 'unnatural' is very striking. I'm intrigued by the "dickcissels" but wasn't sure what they are-- tumbleweeds, I thought--until I saw they are birds. It strikes me that this unfamiliar word might be even more effective a little later in the poem. So close to the top, it's a bit off-putting. I must admit I had to read the last stanza and line a few times, to try to visualize/place myself in the landscape. The combination of 'airborne' and 'departure gate' throws me off and makes me think airport. Thanks for sharing this poem!
ReplyDeleteDargie, this is so lovely and engaging - I've read it several times and each time feel immersed in its world. Agree with Vasiliki that the specifics of the landscape, so carefully observed, are a great strength. What feels at stake, to me: several things! First off, the speaker's relationship with the surrounding landscape - though she clearly lives there, there's a strangeness and lack of familiarity, a curious (and sometimes threatened/threatening) distance between her and this place where she lives. By "curious" I mean the speaker is curious, also sometimes, I think, bewildered or flummoxed, always sharply focused and trying, in her careful looking, to figure things out. Also at stake, I think: an implied conflict between the natural world (the geese, cottonwood fluff, and dickcissels - I did know what these are, though not sure how!) and the sometimes seemingly harmless, sometimes ominous human-created aspects of this world. The speaker feels like she's trying to figure out where she stands in relation to both of those things, to Kansas as a whole - which I think gives the poem great energy. I'm really looking forward to reading more from this m.s. and seeing how the poems speak to each other! One small thing bumped me: "as far as the eye can see" seems not as sharp as other observations here; suggest leaving it out. And a noticing: the speaker doesn't appear at all until the 2nd to last stanza; before this, the observations are more general in the sense whoever is seeing/speaking them isn't specified (I don't know how to say that better/more concisely!). I really like this - am wondering if it is intentional or something that happened naturally in the process of making.
ReplyDeleteHi Dargie,
ReplyDeleteThis poem has so much energy and authority. It seems carefully honed, and I agree that your description of place in all of its particularities is fantastic. I also found myself focusing on the introduction of the speaker, and wondered if there should be a speaker at all. Depending on what stage you are with this poem, you might just try it without the "I" to see what happens. Thanks for sharing this poem!
Dargie, for a New Englander like me, your poem is an adventure -- like an exotic safari. Words such as dickcissels (I guessed they were some sort of hay bales or rolls ;-/) and even the chemical names are so lovely! I love your "mesmerizing undulations" which seems a better way to say murmurations. Though "as far as the eye can see" pales a bit next to it. Maybe another way to say this? It is fascinating that you have built this poem around "things that fly through the air". I wonder where the speaker is in that. The final line has the speaker grounded. I keep wondering if maybe the last stanza could have the speaker, too, flying through the air in some way, maybe borrowing the balloon from the first stanza, something like "some morning, my heart a foil balloon on Valentine's Day, swept free and rising". Just an thought. Thanks for this very visual and exotic-to-me poem!
ReplyDeleteHi Dargie, Thanks for sharing this wonderful poem. I, too, was moved by the evocation of landscape, which is the heart of the poem (for me at least!). The tension between natural beauty and industrialization/"man made" interference seems to constitute the dramatic situation. Like Ethel, I found myself wondering about the speaker’s position in the poem and began to feel as though the poem is more about the landscape than anything. So I also think you might want to try removing the speaker from this poem, which seems to tell us a lot about the speaker’s sensibilities and affective state without needing to reference the speaker him/herself. I hope this makes sense. I was also curious about what dictated your choice of line length. There are lines that are very long while many of the lines are not. This is more a question and something that caught my eye. I noticed that in the last three tercets the first line is end stopped, the middle line is enjamed, and the last line is end stopped. Is this intentional?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
Shannon