Editor’s Note: In addition to a love of nature, Peter thinks many of our readers would like to know about some of our neighborhood’s “creative souls,” so here is the first of what we hope will be a recurring feature of the newsletter.
After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Reed College, Beaumont-Wilshire resident Elyse Fenton worked on farms, maintained trails in the White Mountains of New England and the Pacific Northwest, and taught in Mongolia and elsewhere. She then received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Oregon and has subsequently published two books of poetry: Clamor explores the complex feelings and thoughts of Fenton, who was a self-described “war bride” while her new husband was a world away serving as a medic in Iraq in the midst of war’s chaos. Sweet Insurgent delves deeply into motherhood. Both collections reach out well beyond their central themes. The poetry is hard-hitting and distinctly lyrical, using word sound, rhythm, and imagery more than story and syntax to communicate ideas and feelings. As a result, reading them through more than once maximizes their punch.
A first silent read finds striking individual images and ideas popping off the page:
… a white twist of rag pinned in the bloody center of a civilian’s chest
(from “Clamor” in Clamor)
A second reading, taking the poem’s title and line structure into account, adds another layer. Then, finally, reading aloud, with special attention to the mouthfeel, cadence, and context, one experiences each poem’s full force:
…As if this were not the work of shrapnel—
not the body’s wet rending, flesh reduced to matter—but the litany
of an old field guide, the names of wildflowers spoken out loud:
ischium, basal ganglia, myelin-sheathed endings. Names for parts.
For all our flowering parts.
(from “Notes on an Atrocity” in Clamor)
Sweet Insurgent is dedicated to Elyse’s daughter—her “sweetest insurgent.” “Notes On Labor” gave this never-pregnant reader some hint of what pregnancy and labor might be like:
… weight over distance with the help of friction or its lack—Honeyhips, Granite, won’t you scoot on down— …
and further on:
… lead cloak of cold I can’t drape around me without dry-heaving and cursing the weft of it
your staggering winter-weight …
In a later poem, “When You Begin Asking About Your Provenance,” the mundane act of completing a census form springboards to the irony of pigeonholing a child with a rich genetic heritage:
… blessed be the box checked and unchecked all the boxes checked the box labeled south-anglo-asian/ashkenazi-Saxon
brown-white really light-cocoa-pink a helix strand-stripped & re-equipped …
and later in the same poem:
… as if we were made entirely of halves and not this burlesque village of cells this thatch-roofed commune
of cells the house of us a house only mitotically divided the lease co-signed as if love were a lease …
Fenton’s work has appeared in The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She has won the Pablo Neruda Award and the Bob Bush Memorial Award, and Clamor made her the first American to win The University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize. Elyse is presently working on a novel. Since her work to date has been distinctly lyrical, I can’t wait to see how she handles her novel’s narrative arc.
You can hear Elyse Fenton interviewed about her poetry on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered:
www.npr.org/2010/12/22/132265874/War-Poetry-Inspired-By-A-Husbands-Service
While Portland bookstores show her books to be out of stock, both Clamor and Sweet Insurgent can be obtained online.