Wheels within Wheels

Flying Close to Earhart Edge Derek Pollard Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home Rebecca Loudon No Tell Books http://www.notellbooks.org 38 pages; paper, $9.00 In RebeccaLoudon's new collection, Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home, conceit is everything . As the title suggests, Loudon presents the reader with a series oflyrical epistles, lists, and notes in the voice of one of our country's most cherished heroes, Amelia Earhart. The poems come to us from anebulous realmofhalf-light anddesertisle fantasia, perhaps even from beyond the grave. Obviously, the risks inherent in such a poetic undertaking are huge. Asinglemomentoffaltering andthecollectionwould collapse. Loudon's sense ofbalance and proportion, however, guides the poems expertly and safely to harbor. What's more, Loudon's poetic sensibilities, echoing the outrage and eroticism of Jorie Graham and Sylvia Plath at times, and the matter-of-factness of William Carlos Williams at others, navigate through the destabilizing mythos surrounding the historical Earhart. In a sense, the poems rescue the famed aviator from the mystery ofherown death, giving the reader asense ofEarhart's continuingpresence, even ifonly in spectral form. Consider diese lines from the first of two poems entitled "Father": My knees are bruised from rain. There is sea in my inner ear. I have caught a perfect orange fish. Sometimes this room is so small. One is reminded—artfully, it must be said—of the films ofTim Burton for all the dislocation and otherworldliness of this moment. How is it that Earhart's knees could be "bruised from rain" in a "room...so small"? The same question could be asked about the sea and the orange fish. Why is it that this room is "so small" only "sometimes"? Our discomfiture rests on the fluidity of the poem's location. Where are we to orient ourselves? Earhart's cockpit as her plane descends beneath the ocean's surface? On the shore of a deserted island following the crash? Inher childhoodroominAtchison , Kansas, as a young Earhart dreams herself into the future? We must also ask whether the speaker is living or dead or dying, and from whence is this voice issuing and where and when is it intended to be heard? Are we reading letters washed to shore in bottles? If so, when did these bottles arrive? If contemporaneously , then how do these poetic epistles engage our contemporary situation? Loudon knows her readers well in this regard: they love mystery and they love celebrity, especially in combination. What is most interesting is that, by moving Earhart's discourse into the realm ofpoetry, Loudon questions the morality—and the centrality —of those same predilections. Removed from the constraints ofprosaic functionality (Dear So and So, how is everything?), Earhart's epistles move us into an unmoored and contemplative realm of communicativeness in which we are forced to confront the impetus of our own desires. Just as Earhart's historical mystery fascinates us still, thesepoems raise more questions than they answer— orpropose to answer. In the context of Earhart's disappearance, a poem such as "From the Missing Diary," of which there are seven scattered throughout the collection (think of plane wreckage adrift at sea), forces us to question our own priorities, values, and value systems . Witness these lines: toilet tissue chocolate oranges yeast flour nails oil. A Williamsesque poem-note to be sure, but also a poem indicative of a survivor's attention to detail. By extension, such a poem begs the following quesDetailfrom cover tions of its readers: what is significant in our lives? What is not? In other words, given disaster and crisis, which is sadly the case for all of us, where do we choose to focus our attention? Do we choose the simplicity of ready-made distraction (the latest network news broadcast about Britney's parenting fiascos or Nicole Richie's umpteenth arrest), or do we engage in the tangled sorting ofourown lives and the lives ofthose close to us? How do history—both personal and global—and the present moment interact ? Why, Loudon asks, are these questions of such importance? Navigate is predicated upon such pointed inquiry . Just as Earhart's historical mystery fascinates us still, these poems raise more questions than they answer...