{"id":246,"date":"2014-08-10T13:18:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T17:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=246"},"modified":"2014-08-10T13:18:49","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T17:18:49","slug":"review-of-estrus-by-bill-neumire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=246","title":{"rendered":"Review of Estrus by Bill Neumire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Neumire<\/a><\/p>\n

Bill Neumire. Estrus. <\/em>Aldrich Press, 2013. 89 pgs. $12.60.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Reading through Estrus, <\/em>Bill Neumire\u2019s first full-length collection, I was both puzzled and intrigued. Rereading it, I felt my intrigue heighten, as I began to understand the logic of his craft, yet I seldom anticipated the choices he\u2019d make next. His language often feels more detached than personal, even when a first-person speaker enters the poems, as if the writer has examined each word for its interest, the way an artist might examine each tile before inserting it into a mosaic. The poems often rely on facts about the external world for their controlling images and metaphors, and his language is both precise and surprising. The poems suggest more than they state directly. They are tantalizing\u2014accessible word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence, yet I often felt as if I hadn\u2019t quite grasped their full meaning. There is enough going on with rhythm and image, however, to reward rereading, and eventually the relationships among the various components become clear. I often felt that unique delight of recognizing another poet accomplishing something I wouldn\u2019t have thought to try.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Arctic Tern,\u201d one of the earlier poems in the collection, is written in free verse though clearly influenced by the sonnet. It consists of an octave and a sestet, and there is something like the sonnet\u2019s turn between the two stanzas. Here is the first stanza:<\/p>\n

Fact: The tern sees more daylight than any creature on earth
\nas it turns at each pole before the end of each summer.
\nAt both white ends of the world there is a warmest moment,
\na courtship hour when the right dance
\ncan catch the right eye. In therapy this flight
\nis called avoidance. In archetype this is called the quest.
\nIn science, migration. In a song
\nthis is the refrain.<\/p>\n

Neumire opens with \u201cFact\u201d here, but he interprets that fact from the beginning, steering away from the apparent objectivity with which he begins. Terns are astonishing for their extreme migrations, but for the purposes of this poem, the migrations are important because they are linked by sunlight and warmth, despite our association of the poles with cold. Subjectivity enters early on, in other words, becoming obvious by the \u201ccourtship hour.\u201d We might think we know where this poem is headed now, but we\u2019ll be wrong, for interpretation depends on context\u2014the therapist\u2019s office, a discussion of depth psychology, the ornithologist\u2019s lab, the musician\u2019s keyboard. Reading this poem, we might immediately assume that the tern will function as a symbol, but if its flight serves as metaphor, lines five through eight warn us away from too presumptive an interpretation. I appreciate how Neumire juxtaposes two meanings from related disciplines but with such divergent connotations: \u201cavoidance\u201d and \u201cquest.\u201d Then he seems to revert to the objective, to the extent that we are willing to grant science objectivity. And then he concludes with the possibility that is most surprising to me: \u201cIn a song \/ this is the refrain.\u201d It\u2019s the pleasing return, the delightfully familiar bit upon which the rest is built. How is this so?<\/p>\n

The second stanza seems to introduce an entirely new metaphor:<\/p>\n

Once, overwhelmed by a patch of strawberries,
\nI spent the whole day running
\nfrom the biggest berry to the next biggest, stuffing
\nthem in my red-stained mouth with my red-stained hands
\nnot for fear of their vanishing but for the taste
\nthat was everywhere in me.<\/p>\n

How is a patch of strawberries related to a tern\u2019s migration pattern we might ask. This stanza adds an additional interpretive layer to the list of possibilities from the first stanza. This poem doesn\u2019t mourn scarcity\u2014it\u2019s not a fretful commentary on the limits of polar survival\u2014but rather celebrates abundance, of strawberries, yes, but also implicitly of arctic warmth. The speaker\u2019s ingestion of the strawberries is driven not by gluttony but by astonishment. The last line suggests how fully we merge with the world, for just as the speaker is in the world, the world is also in him. And the \u201cfact\u201d that permits this integration is the recognition of abundance.<\/p>\n

Many of the poems in Estrus <\/em>rely on the sort of context-less fact that begins \u201cThe Arctic Tern\u201d as their impetus, facts that could seem like bits of trivia more suitable for a game show than a collection of poetry if Neumire weren\u2019t in such control of metaphor. Some of the most effective poems that rely on this technique are \u201cThink of the Bioluminescence You Do Not Emit,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s the Hour of the Helpless Horse,\u201d \u201cA Stitch of Facts,\u201d and \u201cBeached Pilot Whale.\u201d Each of these is written in conventional poetic form, with lines and stanzas, but the collection also contains several short prose poems that also achieve their purpose through the incorporation of unusual bits of information. \u201cThe City\u2019s Pediatric Emergency Room\u201d is one of them, and it is also one of the most moving poems in the collection. Neumire\u2019s often matter-of-fact tone paradoxically invites the reader\u2019s emotional response:<\/p>\n

This morning the pig-tailed, corduroy-legged neighbor girl was erased by a red Mazda obeying the limit. She\u2019s still there, though, like a De Kooning erased by Rauschenberg. In a box of facts, I found that one can tickle a penguin into a shattering chuckle & that babies\u2019 eyes all begin blue. There are men in chimneys today & streets being named after berries which were named after scientists who were named after saints. Can we go on? Apparently, for the shifts are turning at the paper mill: night to graveyard, graveyard to day, manufacturing calendars with empty boxes for all your plans.<\/p>\n

Until the last two prepositional phrases, this piece reads like an accumulation of arbitrary facts, intended to demonstrate the reality of chaos or even nihilism. Yet, the end suggests, we go on with our lives, making our plans, penciling in our commitments, as if we control our future, as if we won\u2019t be \u201cerased by a red Mazda obeying the limit.\u201d There\u2019s no one to blame for this tragedy\u2014it might be meaningless, as empty as the boxes on a blank calendar. And yet we can\u2019t ignore this girl, even if she\u2019s been written over by a \u201cbox of facts.\u201d The poem achieves its effect because it delays its sense until the end. Neumire obviously understands not only the rhythm of individual lines and stanzas, but also the rhythm of meaning as he reveals and withholds and reveals.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve enjoyed reading and thinking about this collection. Many of the individual poems were originally published in such respected literary magazines as The Laurel Review, Salamander, Saint Ann\u2019s Review, <\/em>and Rattle, <\/em>so Neumire obviously has readers. I hope this book will garner more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Neumire. Estrus. Aldrich Press, 2013. 89 pgs. $12.60. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Reading through Estrus, Bill Neumire\u2019s first full-length collection, I was both puzzled and intrigued. Rereading it, I felt my intrigue heighten, as I began to understand the logic of his craft, yet I seldom anticipated the choices he\u2019d make next. His language […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}