Amorak Huey’s Ars Poetica Disguised as a Love Poem Disguised
as a Commemoration of the 166th Anniversary of the Rescue of the
Donner Party
Amorak
Huey’s poem in the first issue of TahomaLiterary Review is a masterful example of how to create a poem that creates
an echo of itself in the mind. I think I recently read somewhere that poems
teach us how to read poetry and this poem does an extraordinary job of teaching
us how to read and to read variously. The poem also teaches us about the
multiplicity of ourselves.
The
poem, in the form of couplets, begins with a declarative sentence that feels
axiomatic: “This is life: a series of difficult choices ending in death.” Here we have no persona yet, no character
involved in an action. The second line
creates a plea but still in command form:
“Along the way, try not to judge too harshly.” The command form continues into the next
stanza and with the title in mind, the reader starts to pause and reread the
lines washed through the various disguises from the title. Each line then is creating three separate
accounts of itself. “Share what you
have, but not all of it.”
So
far, each sentence has had no line breaks and no figurative language. What is remarkable, however, is that each
sentence takes on the weight and scope of the three possibilities created in
the title: the experience of making a
poem, of making love, and of making the choices of each individual in the
Donner party. The second line of the second
stanza reads, “Also, avoid shortcuts during winter months, or late fall” and
this axiomatic language continues, this how-to language that could seem trite
but for that title. The sentence
continues into the third stanza: “lest your own late fall yield a new way of
tasting the world—“ and here we have an utterly devastating line encompassing
beauty, ugliness, and brute survival as each layer creates a different flavor
in the mouth of the reader.
The
second line of the third stanza continues the previous thought: “limb and root,
outcome and inspiration—“ and here we the sensuous details of limb and root
with the word “limb” creating various images in our minds: the limb of a tree,
the limb of a lover, the limb of a dead body in the snow. Limb also carrying the word and work of being in limbo at this point in
the poem.
The
fourth stanza: “the height of the stumps
reveals the depth of the snow” again that logical language full of various possibilities
of disquieting interpretation. The
second line, “as the brightness now is equal to the blindness later.” How our
changing perception through time and experience blots out the intensity of the
moment. I love how the echoing b sounds
in brightness and blindness creates an intimacy between the words. The sentence continues into the fifth stanza:
“as today will be rewritten tomorrow.”
Such poignancy when experienced through the title. How memory works on us and we work on it to
create a narrative that is never true to the situation as it occurred, in
creating a poem, in creating a lover, in creating and recreating the monster inside
us as we made/make the choice to eat or not.
Huey ends that stanza with the line, “Its why we must keep moving.” And here we have the use of the word “we” for
the first time and our involvement in all these possible actions deepens.
The
poems shifts perspective in the sixth stanza or gains a perspective. We become placed, grounded with the simple first
word of the line, “Somewhere.” Here is the
entire stanza:
Somewhere
in the middle distance, an ocean
rises
like a great column of light,
I
wondered why the choice of the word “middle” here, in the middle of the
line. I think this is important for
perspective, sort of a groping around for familiarity or security. And also, I like how the m sound echoes the m
sounds in the previous line of the words must and moving. And of course you have the echo of the word “muddle”
included in the word. In this stanza we
have so many visual images as well that adds to the grounding of ourselves, of
where we actually are. The light is
different here as well, did you notice? The
blue bright light of the ocean versus the white blinding of the snow earlier in
the poem. Color now, albeit subtle and unspoken, but here.
The
seventh stanza:
beckons
like the salt and sweat of a first kiss.
This
is why we carry on so. Knowing hunger
I
just have to pause here and revel in how that line breaks after those two
works, “knowing hunger.” That is an
impeccable line break and teaches us what a line break can do, with such simple
language. We all know hunger of various
kinds and coupled with that sweaty and salty first kiss from the line above, we
discover what the metaphoric possibilities of those kisses might be: the kiss
of a successful poem, the first kiss of the lover, and the first kiss of a body
entering ours we never thought to taste.
How that line break makes us linger for a second and feel the hunger
after that kiss. Isn’t there always a
hunger after a kiss?
The
poem takes a turn in the eighth stanza. Having
known hunger “is but the first test.
Like this. Only faster.” How can
this be? What this is Huey
creating? This moment. We are all involved here in this moment,
sharing it but it moves and the poem spins.
Notice that all the words here are single syllabic words, simple words
moving us forward and quickening the action.
How single moments can spin us dizzy us.
The
poem continues:
The
season turns. The wind’s slow sway
the
frostbite and flame, the infection creeping—
I
thought myself too tired to go on.
Here
we have an actor a someone having the immediate sensation of experiencing all of these situations at
once. Our sympathy, our empathy is heightened now having moved slowly with the
speaker to this point this exhaustion of possibilities of exploration. How the I creates meaning.
But
the poem continues:
Then
you appeared, as if from California
or
heaven, and held out your hand.
My
ghost bones stirred.
I
let you in. You carried me out.
I
love how the mythos of California and the Donner Party all convenes in that
line and then deepens with the mention of heaven. And that last line, such simplistic language,
such simplistic action and we enter into a relationship with language, with
each other, and with the experience of salvation.
This
is a poem about how a poem after that first reading continues to create waves
of memory, of emotion, and of empathy.
How someone you meet can utterly shatter you. How a situation and the
choices we make constantly creates a different person from who we thought we
were at the outset. Through the layers
and disguises we meet ourselves many times over, and each time we are changed.
