Dirt, Root, Silk by Susan Azar Porterfield (review)

The latest collection of poems by Northern Illinois resident and Emeritus Professor of English at Rockford University Susan Azar Porterfield reads like you are taking a nice leisurely drive down a sweet-scented country lane with only three working wheels. The wheel that has ceased to perform is what lies at the heart of this poet’s work: finding solace in small acts while confronting difficult questions of living and dying. Dirt, Root, Silk, Porterfield’s third book of poetry, won the Cider Press Review’s Editor’s Prize in 2015 following the publication of two other collections: In the Garden of our Spines (2004) and Kibbe (2012). This latest prize winning collection represents a poet who is ripening like fruit on a sun-drenched kitchen windowsill: aging slowly, growing thoughtful, and coming to terms with the idea of finitude.

If Dirt, Root, Silk has a geography, it is upstate Illinois near the Wisconsin border amid the farms and flat land west of Chicago. Yet, Porterfield’s themes range far and wide, delving into philosophical ideas of being, life, death, and the passage of time, all tossed together with astounding observations of everyday moments that seek to mystify the ordinary and show that even the quotidian holds great truths. One of the most compelling poems along these lines is “In Which You and I Witness.” Porterfield writes, “I shouldn’t have awakened you, but I didn’t want to be alone,” when she notices a dying chickadee outside her window. She is getting ready for work, doing all of the mundane things people do in the morning; brushing hair, thinking, peering into the mirror, when she notices the erratic bird: “and you understood that no one should be alone and neither of us said it’s just a bird.” The bird breathes its last breath as they watch and the poem ends with: “I had to get dressed for work then. It was a Monday, and it’s always, always the same.” What Porterfield does well is subtly interject a moment into the narrative of her poem: the watching of the bird. Then she twists the image inside out so that her readers begin to observe from a different perspective. In the case of the bird, Porterfield distorts nature and we discover that it is dying. She does this to illuminate the experience people have when confronting death: that something profound has taken place on such a commonplace day. The fact that she did not want to be alone with death underscores the universal fear that we will die alone. As with many other poems in this volume, Porter-field gently nudges her readers into experiencing the tragic within the beautiful.

Another poem worth mentioning is “The Sound of ” because it highlights again Porterfield’s ability to take a routine event, and find the esoteric philosophical depth that can be gleaned from a task such as bringing in the Buddha from the garden: “When we took the Buddha in for the winter, we found he was half rain.” The Buddha sloshes around as the poet muses on how big and silent he sat all summer long on a stump in the garden and now, as winter descends, he has the voice of a “river of words.” The poem has a wry humor as statue is held “heels-over-head and shook and shook” to unleash his voice. Nothing, not even the stoic stone Buddha in the back garden, can escape the ridiculous, and his plight exposes how we are all living absurd lives. These poems are the philosophical musings of a wise woman who has the weight of time gracing her shoulders. It is through these observations, like that of her garden Buddha, that Porterfield’s poetry becomes sublime.

They transcendent quality of the poetry in this collection would not be complete without a nod towards love. Porterfield’s love poems are endearing offerings of the kind of warmth that develops out of many years together. “Christopher Does the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes Online” reflects...