Blue Heron

Cover

poetry Rilke’s1923DuinoElegiesarguesthattheanimal’sexistenceisinfinite, unbounded by thoughts about its condition or its mortality. But for the poet who would enter into imaginative sympathy with animal species today, it is as impossible to idealize the figure of “the animal” as it is to make any definitive claims about nonhuman modes of being. Turning this ethical impasse into an opportunity for refiguring the relations between human language and nonhuman others, Blue Heron shows us that “the perimeter around the invisible is a person.” Elizabeth Robinson’s exceptional new book puts the human capacity for abstraction to work at the boundaries where what’s nonhuman escapes our understanding and only seems to go missing. Ever attuned to the paradox of using words to pursue their quarry into the unsayable, Robinson’s spare and incomparably graceful lyrics turn language into a liminal space where “the breathing creature / loves its other.” —brian teare In Blue Heron, Elizabeth Robinson unleashes her distinctive minimalism in elegy. Alert to what is partially glimpsed, piecemeal, and indirect, to the way a fragment of life can summon the transcendent, she offers a fierce lament for her father as his physical body, sometimes bird and sometimes man, hurls itself toward burial. The title sequence spins through the wild range of feelings inside grief—fury, confusion, buoyancy, disquiet—while being anchored in an authority that is utterly bracing. Driven by questions and hyperaware of loss, these poems get close to what is scathing about death: the hungers it reveals, the charades, “all you may not surmount.” —joanna klink Elizabeth Robinson’s Blue Heron performs a high-definition infrared thermographic study, sensing the subtle presence between living entities and what is dying into other forms. In a scintillating rush, nature and culture and the fine line of what it means to be human dissolve into matrices of physical presence itself, no longer cordoned off, sequestered or marked. The blue heron is a guide that kindles relationships with all vantage points. There is also the illusive monster who negotiates otherness and sameness: a gossamer reality that shapeshifts into newness as understanding develops. This is a great work of symbiosis. —brenda iijima blue heron elizabeth robinson elizabeth robinson is the author of multiple collections of poetry includingThreeNovels (Omnidawn) and Counterpart (Ahsahta Press). Robinson has been a winner of the National Poetry Series and the Fence Modern Poets Prize. She has received grants from the Fund for Poetry, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Boomerang Foundation. Robinson has taught creative writing and literature at the University of Montana as the Hugo Fellow, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and at several other universities. Cover design: Kaelyn Riley Author photograph: John Sarsgard center for literary publishing blue heron elizabeth robinson mountain west poetry series poems blue heron The MountainWest Poetry Series Stephanie G’Schwind & Donald Revell, series editors We Are Starved, by Joshua Kryah The City She Was, by Carmen Giménez Smith Upper Level Disturbances, by Kevin Goodan TheTwo Standards, by HeatherWinterer Blue Heron, by Elizabeth Robinson blue heron elizabeth robinson The Center for Literary Publishing Colorado State University poems Copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Robinson. All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Center for Literary Publishing, 9105 Campus Delivery, Department of English, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-9105. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Robinson, Elizabeth, 1961- [Poems. Selections] Blue heron : poems / Elizabeth Robinson. pages ; cm. -- (The mountain west poetry series) isbn 978-1-885635-29-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) -isbn 978-1-885635-30-3 (electronic) i.Title. ps3568.o2883a6 2013 8ii’.54--dc23 2013017275 The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. 1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 This book is for Sasquatch, who does exist. ...