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Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Thu, 01 Mar 2007
Book of the Day: Shouldering Zero by S. Beth Bishop
S. Beth Bishop's Shouldering Zero is an exciting find: a first book that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally sensuous. Bishop's book explores the subject of zero as metaphor, as unit of measure, as site of geography. Georgraphy itself--of land, and of the heart--also figures in Bishop's work.
This poem encompasses several of Bishop's concerns:
Orientation
No map, you understand. Where water seeps, it isn't
blue. Imagine Morning drags her feet, leaves a gilded
trail. Her dress is wet. Her tongue swells. Make the best
of what she says, for she is short of phrase, without gesture,
and resigned. There may be a sense of land, but it is only
a sense, an as if, as though ground were just what kept us
from falling further. Imagining a map won't set the curve,
won't turn sand to grass, brown to green, or sprout sweet bean
flowers out of sour alfalfa. Words run down from earth to holes
in earth and freeze there. Yes, no way from here to here. Even
where water might be blue, it never is. We have to guess where
never waits, and whether there is any always left after our light
gestures burn away like dew. Morning drags her tail, turning
animal, just as we become land again, ourselves. No maps. You
understand. Wet guesses. Guilt in our steps. It's best to imagine.
Bishop is an unusually adventurous poet, and her work is a strong debut.