Visiting Providence in April (a city I love more with each visit), I visited a wonderful bookstore, Paper Nautilus Books. Because they stock both new and used books, I was able to find an out of print, early collection by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, The Heat Bird. It's an impressive book, and the passages I quote below are less powerful out of context, but nonetheless compelling.
The book is a single long poem in four sections composed of short passages which feel like independent poems in their own right. The first section is "Pack Rat Sieve":
...the horizon is just a change where
from going deep you go wider, but go
*
All this time
she was trying to recede until things would resemble
each other, as she had imagined the void to be a room
of fog, so the figure of a man or a house on stilts
should clearly loom from its field.
*
There is a woman who can whoop with laughing
like a wolf at the stars, one to one, without
any bridge, but she is not that woman
*
...an urge to go look at the plain, your back to the town
and the ferris wheel.
The second, much shorter section is "Farolita":
Toward town, in low sun, she sees light
in flapping laundry. It was just movement at first. She has
heard the processions walk by. At first you think their
singing is a moan in the wind.
The third is "Ricochet Off Water":
The only quiet place was in the well where they
kept the melons. There she could hear most distinctly
people's cries in China.
*
The big hill is solid in dim light. A lit cloud
rolls down behind it. She was standing in the dirt yard
trying to decide between them.
*
Then she steps across what she can't remember.
And lastly, the title section, "The Heat Bird":
Stepping
across stones in the river which cover
my sound, I startle a big bird who must circle
the meadow to gain height. There is a din
of big wings. A crow loops over and over
me. I can see many feathers gone from its wing
by sky filling in, but it's not the big bird
I walk into the meadow to find what I've already called
an eagle to myself.
*
Twice I am not sure if light wings
between some bushes are not light through crow feathers
but then I really see the expansive back swoop down
and circle up to another cottonwood and light
It's a buzzard with a little red head. You say
that's good. They're not so scarce anymore. It sould
have been more afraid of me
*
Fresh wind blows the other way at dawn, so
I'm free to wonder at the kind of charge such a mass
of death might put on the air, which is sometimes clear
with yellow finches and butterflies.
*
Like a critic I thought form was an equilibrium
which progressed by momentum from some original reduction
of fear to the horizon.
*
In an apricot tree
were many large birds, and an eagle that takes off
as if tumbling down before catching its lift. I thought
it was flight that rumpled the collar down like a broken neck
but then as it climbed, it resembled a man in an eagle dress
whose feathers ruffle back because of firm feet
stamping the ground in wind.
*
If I am far from you isn't the current
of missed events between us an invention of potency
like a summer storm at night, or when I see you
*
When I touch your skin, or hear singers in the dark, I get
so electric, it must be the whole dam of my absence pushing
I think, which might finally flow through its proper canyons
leaving the big floor emptied of sea, empty again
where there used to be no lights after dark
*
The eagles'
wingbones began to stretch open with practicing, so
luminous space in their wings showed against the sky
giving each a great delicacy in turns
You can learn more about Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge at The Poetry Foundation by following this link.
The book is a single long poem in four sections composed of short passages which feel like independent poems in their own right. The first section is "Pack Rat Sieve":
...the horizon is just a change where
from going deep you go wider, but go
*
All this time
she was trying to recede until things would resemble
each other, as she had imagined the void to be a room
of fog, so the figure of a man or a house on stilts
should clearly loom from its field.
*
There is a woman who can whoop with laughing
like a wolf at the stars, one to one, without
any bridge, but she is not that woman
*
...an urge to go look at the plain, your back to the town
and the ferris wheel.
The second, much shorter section is "Farolita":
Toward town, in low sun, she sees light
in flapping laundry. It was just movement at first. She has
heard the processions walk by. At first you think their
singing is a moan in the wind.
The third is "Ricochet Off Water":
The only quiet place was in the well where they
kept the melons. There she could hear most distinctly
people's cries in China.
*
The big hill is solid in dim light. A lit cloud
rolls down behind it. She was standing in the dirt yard
trying to decide between them.
*
Then she steps across what she can't remember.
And lastly, the title section, "The Heat Bird":
Stepping
across stones in the river which cover
my sound, I startle a big bird who must circle
the meadow to gain height. There is a din
of big wings. A crow loops over and over
me. I can see many feathers gone from its wing
by sky filling in, but it's not the big bird
I walk into the meadow to find what I've already called
an eagle to myself.
*
Twice I am not sure if light wings
between some bushes are not light through crow feathers
but then I really see the expansive back swoop down
and circle up to another cottonwood and light
It's a buzzard with a little red head. You say
that's good. They're not so scarce anymore. It sould
have been more afraid of me
*
Fresh wind blows the other way at dawn, so
I'm free to wonder at the kind of charge such a mass
of death might put on the air, which is sometimes clear
with yellow finches and butterflies.
*
Like a critic I thought form was an equilibrium
which progressed by momentum from some original reduction
of fear to the horizon.
*
In an apricot tree
were many large birds, and an eagle that takes off
as if tumbling down before catching its lift. I thought
it was flight that rumpled the collar down like a broken neck
but then as it climbed, it resembled a man in an eagle dress
whose feathers ruffle back because of firm feet
stamping the ground in wind.
*
If I am far from you isn't the current
of missed events between us an invention of potency
like a summer storm at night, or when I see you
*
When I touch your skin, or hear singers in the dark, I get
so electric, it must be the whole dam of my absence pushing
I think, which might finally flow through its proper canyons
leaving the big floor emptied of sea, empty again
where there used to be no lights after dark
*
The eagles'
wingbones began to stretch open with practicing, so
luminous space in their wings showed against the sky
giving each a great delicacy in turns
You can learn more about Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge at The Poetry Foundation by following this link.
No comments:
Post a Comment