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A. V. ChristieKeats, in a letter, once described the poet as ". . . the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity -- he is continually . . . filling some other Body -- The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute -- the poet has none; he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's creatures." Keats, of course, was talking about the poet's essential ability to enter the consciousness of diverse creation, and, in doing so, to recognize his or her affinity (and dissimilarity) to the world beyond self and body. In the poems of A. V. Christie (selected from her recently completed first-book manuscript, Nine Skies), we see this magical process at work. In "Alchemy" she writes, "I could turn to anything: laurel tree, reverberation, rain of coins, swan . . . ," as she explores her shifting poetic identity, derived from and defined by the body's limits. In "Darwin Crosses the Andes," the voice of the great naturalist becomes an imaginative vehicle for the poet, an opportunity to meditate on unseen divinity ("What force is ever-tinkering with such variation?/What is responsible for each splendid form, the lapses into ruin,/for the wild and the profound?"). And in "Diving for Pearls," she crosses oceans and cultures to discover the defining point of similarity between her own life and the life of the pearl divers. Christie is indeed an alchemist, as she transforms the experiential grain of sand into the pearl, or poem, that she and her women divers seek. -- Elizabeth Spires AlchemyMy body goes before me, like a lantern down a dark lane, bringing one thing after another out of darkness into a ringof light . . . . My imagination is the body's. --Virginia Woolf Darwin Crosses the AndesAll day we followed the madrina up into the mountains, the steady rise and fall of her flecked grey flanks tedious and hypnotic. The bell around her neck made a modest sound as each hoof struck the terraced rock, our ten mules following their godmother, their long ears flickering to hear her. During the ascent I felt in my chest the onset of the puna, some small difficulty of breath. Many in Chile do not comprehend this. They think it is something in the rock, in the snow, a power the mountains have. Truths will have their different origins. "These waters have puna," they say. After the stubborn potatoes which would not cook in the boil of this diminished atmosphere, "in the pot's iron curse," I yearn to reach Mendoza where I hear watermelons are large as a mule's head and a heaping wheelbarrow's worth of peaches, olives or figs can be had for threepence. Climbing, I've collected thirteen species of mice. What force is ever-tinkering with such variation? What is responsible for each splendid form, the lapses into ruin, for the wild and profound? for the muddled torrents through these mountains, their furious inclination? Tonight round stones borne end over end along the Maypu make a hollow underwater sound, haunting above the roar toward the ocean. I hear in them time passing irrecoverably by. My companions sleep through as sparks from the dry wood lift, torrents of brilliant lepidoptera in an extravagant sky. Diving for PearlsWhere is it, exactly where? Does it matter -- once a year, in a time of harvest. I've forgotten the season, the time of year, whether it's warm. Perhaps, then, just the ocean the color of pale tea in the shallows, or some such ornamentation. But for some weeks, the women leave everything; they go out in their slender boats, out into the dark after pearls: creamy, ambient in the depths. From a bucket, they will warm at some woman's throat. And the lanterns are like wishes, what wishes far out over the water. They leave their husbands to tend to the children, to open the shades each morning, to steam rice until the whole kitchen is fogged in, to market, to trim, I suppose, if need be, the wayward bonsai tree. The women barely sleep in their delicate work, work like some narcotic, a rightness elemental buoying them. With strong kicks, holding hands, they part the black waters with knives in their mouths. I think of you there as the dark heightens the ceilings of your house, wrapping the fragile tea cup nestling it in the moving box going to another state as I work here at my desk, near the amaryllis' mute trumpet -- the poem, the afternoon aimless, the month trying its best to snow. Vermeer would have us primly at the scale weighing pearls in the wan light of another morning. We'd be all silk and satisfaction. But for some years, we've been pushing through a darkness, an anger dressed as sadness, we've been going beyond our husbands, pressing hungry for the clean, white thing. Again today, we are plying our way with knives and wishes. Late SwimI leave the day behind in the churned light. The water is sour in my mouth, each accurate breath new, filled with citronella, with oleander unfurling its poison in the dark. I turn and turn, want to reach you, want you to dive silently in, rise under me, clasp my ankle in your hand. I can almost hear your slick, wet steps Mother there near the tiki lamp clipping dead roses heavy into a brown paper bag. I turn toward the lamplight, swim into the stutter and shine of home movies where you paint your white way down a fence. I hold still your smiling. You are lost in a flood of boys down the steps of your first communion. Strangely absent in the next frames, just your trout arranged on the sand, jeweled and diminishing. The dancers' kilts sway too quickly. Under a tired sky they dance the sword dance, the fling, to your soundless piping. Near Rushmore you turn to the camera. I reverse the film: you back away from the shadowed men, leap from the aquamarine to the diving board: the splash healed, I rescue you every time.
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