MT. ST. HELENS’S GHOST IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR
was not a mountain, but a massive,
unusually distinct cloud,
shaped like a pyramid with a flattish top,
building upward, just before dusk.
Its surface caught the apricot light of sunset,
alpenglow
of the plains.
It danced teasingly
from my rearview mirror to each side mirror and back again
as the highway wagged west,
presiding over the landscape with a desultory menace
and a beguiling beauty, and growing in apparent
potency as I drove—
but at a distance,
partially seen and
being left behind.
In the morning, I read that the tornado
the cloud became killed a person and destroyed
three houses a hundred miles to the east.
In Kansas, look for your cataclysms
in water vapor.
Underestimate me.
That’ll be fun.
Dargie, thanks for your helpful comments on my last two poems, and yes, please, keep us posted about the residency! With each poem you post I'm getting a stronger and stronger sense of your m.s. as a whole, and I love that - seeing recurring images and themes and tones. Here, as in other poems, the fact that the speaker is driving, and observing the landscape while doing so, feels key - observing in a way that feels both attentive/attuned and separate, as the speaker is separated from the landscape by the speed of the car, its physical presence between her and the natural world, as well as her emotional/psychic stance toward the landscape, which also feels curious/attuned/engaged and at the same time separate, distanced... "estranged" is way too strong, but a subtler, quieter form of that! This poem also fascinated me - the cloud of the volcano being visible from so far away, the fact that it became a tornado - so much I didn't know. I love the last two lines (is this the volcano talking? I don't really need to know - that's how I read it - the tone here is fantastic, funny and wry and ominous). I think that in the context of your m.s., it'd be clear the poem is set in Kansas, which I think is important, but which I didn't realize until the end (I saw "Mt. St. Helen's" in the title and thought "Washington"). I was a little bumped by the wording at the end of stanza three, specifically "being left behind," which doesn't feel grammatically correct to me (though I can't say why and could be wrong). Not that poems necessarily need to be that! But the rest of the poem is, and these lines feel important, in their sense of the cloud as something profound, mysterious, beautiful, and frightening... and at the same time withheld and distant, both emotionally and physically. I also hesitated a bit over the second to last stanza: I think it's important as a set up for the final stanza, but it feels "telling" to me, giving the reader a directive that's less subtle and resonant than the rest of the poem. Hope this is helpful. Looking forward to reading more from this book...
ReplyDeleteDargie, I love the way your KS poems are inverting the familiar "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto" to "We're *in* Kansas now"! This poem also exclaims at the exoticism of the state -- a place where a cloud of water vapor from a distant volcano (love the use of GHOST in the title!) can morph into a deadly tornado overnight (if I am reading this poem correctly?). And at the same time, be extremely beautiful, so much so that it is hard to take the eyes off of it while driving! I can absolutely imagine it from your great description. Though would the cloud be the shape of an *inverted* pyramid? I love the highway wagging west. I wonder if you need the phrase about it growing in potency, as the next stanza tells us that in more concrete terms? In the context of your MS, I am reading the last two lines as being uttered by Kansas itself... I could be totally wrong? I wonder about switching from the past to the present tense -- to intensify the sense of danger throughout this brief poem. What do others think? Thanks for another exotic Kansas poem, Dargie!
ReplyDeleteHi Dargie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this poem with us! And yes, please keep us updated about your residency. My fingers are crossed. I really love this poem’s use of imagery and felt myself immediately drawn into the scenery/the poem’s core because of it. I found myself wondering, however, what might happen if you trim down on the adjectives (they stuck out to me for some reason and some struck me as unnecessary). For example, I wonder if these lines need all of the adjectives?
“presiding over the landscape with a desultory menace
and a beguiling beauty, and growing in apparent”
To my mind, they might be even more effective as:
presiding over the landscape with a menace
and a beguiling beauty, and growing in apparent
OR
presiding over the landscape with a desultory menace
and a beauty, and growing in apparent
So I’m not suggesting that you get rid of adjectives but that you play with where they are most effective. Like Kasey, I also felt that the last two lines were a bit too much telling as compared to the rest of the poem. Personally, I think lines “In Kansas, look for your cataclysms/ in water vapor. “ A small quibble: isn’t vapor often/always water? In short, I don’t think “water” was central to my understanding of these lines.
Thanks for sharing!
Shannon
Hi Dargie-- your poems are utterly original and surprising. My favorite part of this one is the second stanza-- the wonderful sounds and the idea of the 'alpenglow/ of the plains.' I agree with Kasey that Mt. St. Helens's makes one think of Washington, which is confusing at the very start of a Kansas poem. Also, I found the numerous adjectives in the poem distracted me--'*beguiling* beauty' is perhaps an obvious one to omit-- in general, I like Shannon's suggestions above. As far as tone, I wasn't convinced by the italicized couplet at the end. It puts me off a little bit. There are so many interesting observations in this piece, and I hope you'll continue working on it. Thank you for sharing it, Dargie.
ReplyDelete