Post-Lorca Poetry

Page 13 March–April 2009 may or may not be taken by the war, or a son who may or may not be in danger, or a woman looking back on her life or her marriage or her son, or perhaps the way that all of those subjects eventually turn out to be the same thing. The individual poems, relying heavily on elliptical non-sequiturs and half-described objects, can appear cagey or cryptic when standing alone, but they build into a feverish lucidity when read in context with the collection’s other pieces. “Like Having a Light at Your Back You Can’t See But You Can Still Feel (1),” just a few pages into collection, begins with, As if it were streaming into your ear. The edges of a room long vanished. She is not really hearing what he’s really saying. The shine is going out of the ground but they are sure of their footing. It ends with, “If this took place anywhere near the presidential palace / it would be nonstop terrifying . / And this could be the reason she has started to scream.” The poem, peppered with half-rhymes and alliteration, forces the reader to make what sense is possible out of the juxtaposition of partial images. But when the poem returns in its second installment, much later in the book and beginning with the same five lines, it ends with a husband asking a wife to turn a light off: “I can still feel it, he says. I can feel it / streaming in my ear.” The title, and the poem itself, is now redolent with images of fear, government buildings, the domestic bedroom, insomnia, vulnerability—even, perhaps, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. While the revelation in these particular poems is worth the wait and work, other poems, such as “Like a Prisoner of Soft Words (1)” and the corresponding “Like a Prisoner of Soft Words (2),” are vague enough that they could be about almost anything. That the impact of each poem is enhanced by the presence of its counterpart—and the poems between them—is certain, but where ambiguity outweighs craft, that enhancement isn’t quite enough. Throughout Rising, Falling, Hovering, images build slowly—a mention of fog in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that “rub[s] off the edge” in the first poem returns “spectral as neon” in the fourth; the young couple who “wore their own smell” in the second poem are ten pages and two poems later drinking beer and wearing “the scent of smokers”; several poems later, after they have fought, made up, had a son, traveled through Mexico, and been occupied by reports of war, the couple is still wrestling with communication and, “lack[ing] verisimilitude… cannot reproduce the smell of the linden.” Thus, the reader remembers again their younger counterparts, who smelled of themselves and were sure of their footing. Yet the scenes here and throughout the book never come completely into focus, as Wright’s eye moves too quickly for the lens to settle. In lesser moments, the bewilderment this creates obscures the intended craft, but at her best, Wright creates emotional leaps that stick in the throat. In the second installment of the long title poem, “Rising, Falling, Hovering, cont.,” she guides us from the Iraq War’s mortality report (“2,066 / of our members will remain Forever Young”) to a “sun-drenched shore” that Iraqi children will never reach, and finally, with the agility of a cat burglar, Wright proclaims, “it’s Monday again / I have been to Pilates I found my old coat / I took my will to the notary.” Like a long acid jazz set, the best of these poems are made up of evolving riffs that will hypnotize a loyal audience with their rhythms. Wright plays with interruption in other ways as well: by slapping “to be cont.” throughout the continuous portions of the poem “Rising, Falling, Hovering ,” she creates an additional layer of disruption and, with it, a sense of the perpetuity of relationships, the war, the day-to-day chores. The presentation of the poems themselves, along with their form and content, creates meaning—just as the speaker feels rent by...