AT THE
MOUNTAIN WHERE HE FELL
As a rock balanced on pillar of ice
As pebbles dislodged in a single step
And much to learn
of walk-road
mouth-sound deer-dust silt
bone-blade as the root
of separation
Wing beat : to repeat, to practice
Grass-road
bird-door stone sky
American poet Susan Tichy’s sixth poetry title, and fourth consecutive title through
Ahsahta Press, is The Avalanche Path in Summer (Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2019), a meditative articulation of rural
space. The poems that make up The
Avalanche Path in Summer are reminiscent of the work of Brian Teare (who
blurbs the back cover, as well) [see my review of Teare’s latest here], though
their shared meditative awareness of natural space, and the acknowledgment of
the erosion of that same space through human activity. Tichy’s writing is
incredibly physical, dense and straightforward, from the expression of a
just-shot doe, “before the blood jet, that look // of mere surprise” (“‘WITHOUT
EXAGGERATION, WITHOUT MYSTERY, / WITHOUT ENMITY, & WITHOUT MERCY’”) to the
opening of “EVERY STEP STUBBORN,” that reads “on a whiplash path / rockfall
rain : // pump blood and lymph / through muscle, fascia // joints of the sacrum
/ nested, not fused // so the slightest twist / of fall, whip- // crack of
spine and tailbone bends / stumbles
revises itself :” to “terrible
objects / steps collected / on calm summer path / of the avalanche— // eggs
of the pipit / sheep bones, eager // to ‘lay the forms / of passing clouds’”
(“ARCH”). As she ends her lengthy “Author Statement,” included with the press
release:
At a glance, these ideas may seem far from the
projects of my earlier books, but a poem’s declared subject is less like a box,
more like a vortex pulling thought and experience toward itself. Particularly
in Gallowglass, images of mountain
life were deposited into a matrix defined by the book’s ostensible subjects. The Avalanche Path in Summer simply
reverses field and ground: instead of a book about “foreign soldiers” in which
“nature” is embedded, here is a book about mountains in which injury and war
are the porphyritic inclusions that define a specific conglomerate, a particular
life. What does not change is the responsibility to witness. Our historical
position is rare: to observe environmental change at this scale, happening not
in deep time but in human time. As artists, as citizens, we must both use and
endure that privilege.
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