{"id":606,"date":"2019-04-09T15:33:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T19:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=606"},"modified":"2019-06-12T15:06:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T19:06:21","slug":"review-of-harborless-by-cindy-hunter-morgan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=606","title":{"rendered":"Review of Harborless by Cindy Hunter Morgan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cindy Hunter Morgan. Harborless.\n<\/em>Wayne State University Press, 2017. 65 pgs. $16.99.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harborless, <\/em>Cindy Hunter Morgan\u2019s first full-length collection, is unusual in several respects. The book consists of forty poems responding to specific shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, wrecks that often occurred because of weather, of course, but also due to exploding boilers, waterlogged wheat, or collisions with other ships. They carried loads of pigs, Christmas trees, apples, immigrants. The poems are interesting for their content but also for their craft\u2014they rely on memorable figurative language, incorporate a range of poetic forms, and successfully incorporate the voices of multiple characters\u2014yet they are also entirely accessible for readers who believe they don\u2019t like poetry. \n\n<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The collection is arranged into five sections, each\nbracketed by \u201cDeckhand\u201d poems that suggest thematic concerns to be explored in\nthe following section. The first poem, for example, \u201cDeckhand: Scent Theory,\u201d\ndescribes a young man who recalls his past and considers his present through\naroma:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he climbed up the deck ladder
that first morning, his shirt still smelled
of his mother’s wash line:
Dreft and sunshine.

Now what he breathes is rain
and ore, deck paint, grease,
engine oil, boiler exhaust,
steam.

Mornings there is coffee.
Sometimes he pours a bit
on the cuff of his sleeve
so later he can press his nose in it.

The poem concludes with these lines:

At night he peels
his clothes off
and drops them in a pile,

dark, stagnant puddle
of stained cotton,
cesspool of sweat turning
to mildew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem progresses from pleasant scents that\nrecall presumably pleasant memories\u2014laundry on a line and the deckhand\u2019s\nmother\u2014through less pleasant but utilitarian scents\u2014deck paint, engine oil\u2014to\nthe unequivocally vile\u2014a \u201ccesspool of sweat.\u201d This job, working on a ship all\nday out on the lake, might have seemed romantic to the young man when he was\nstill imagining his future, but it quickly acquires the characteristics of most\nphysical labor. It\u2019s exhausting work, and the rewards are slight. The speaker\ndoesn\u2019t directly reveal the deckhand\u2019s thoughts here, permitting the imagery to\nevoke all we need to know. Such effective imagery characterizes many of the\npoems in the collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These final two stanzas of \u201cDeckhand: Scent\nTheory\u201d also illustrate Morgan\u2019s skill with sonic devices. We might quickly\nnotice the slant rhyme between \u201cpeels\u201d and \u201cpile,\u201d but then notice the\nrepetition of both \u201cp\u201d and \u201cl\u201d in \u201cpuddle\u201d one line later, as well as the\nsubsequent internal slant rhyme with \u201cpool\u201d in \u201ccesspool.\u201d In addition the \u201coo\u201d\nof \u201cpool\u201d is repeated in \u201cmildew.\u201d Because English spelling is so inconsistent,\nthe same sound often represented by wildly different spellings, the carryover\nof \u201cpool\u201d to \u201cmildew\u201d is invisible to the eye and therefore more subtle when\nthe ear picks it up. Then there\u2019s also the alliteration of \u201cstagnant\u201d and\n\u201cstained\u201d which contribute to the consonance of \u201ccotton,\u201d \u201csweat,\u201d and\n\u201cturning.\u201d And of course, there\u2019s assonance in \u201ccesspool\u201d and \u201csweat.\u201d\nVirtually every syllable, in other words, contributes to the aural pleasure of\nthese stanzas. It\u2019s tempting to assume that accessible poetry will be\nunsophisticated in its craft, but this poem more than manages the dual\nchallenges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the poems in Harborless <\/em>are written in free verse, but Morgan also incorporates\nseveral in received forms, notably a series of erasures printed to resemble the\nremains of burned paper, as well as a pantoum and a couple of prose poems. Here\nare the first few sentences of \u201cJ. Barber, 1871\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peach crisp, peach pie, peach jam, peach compote,\nwhole peaches, sliced peaches. In those hours before the peaches burned, the\nwhole ship smelled like August in a farm kitchen. The hold was full of Michigan\norchards, full of juice and sugar and the soft fuzz of peach skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exuberance of the opening list is fun to read,\ndespite its context. The rhythmic energy continues throughout the poem, which\nconcludes with this sentence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peaches sizzled and spit as the ship burned, as\nfire consumed what was made of sugar and what was made of wood, as masts\ntoppled like limbs pruned from fruit trees, as men rolled across the deck like\nwindfalls, bruised and scraped, and everything was reduced to carbon and loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of the exuberant language, the last\nclause, \u201ceverything was reduced to carbon and loss,\u201d becomes particularly\nhaunting, reminding readers that despite their visions of \u201cmen roll[ing] across\nthe deck like windfalls,\u201d this event is not comic but tragic. Morgan\u2019s ability\nto manipulate the reader\u2019s response is impressive here, as the poem includes\nsuch attractive imagery as \u201ceach peach was seared, the sweet juice of summer\nbriefly concentrated and contained before everything cooked, oozed, dripped,\nand exploded,\u201d appealing to the reader\u2019s desire, before it turns to the final evocative\nstatement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This poem, like others I\u2019ve discussed, achieves\nits effect in part through its reliance on imagery associated with the land,\nwith farming, to describe its opposite, life on water. Morgan\u2019s reliance on\nagricultural imagery creates an almost nostalgic motif woven throughout the\ncollection, such that the poems have more subtle craft-oriented relationships in\naddition to the obvious relationships of content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cities of Marquette and Munising, MI, both\nlocated on the shore of Lake Superior, have chosen Harborless <\/em>as one of their community reads for next fall. A\ncollection of poetry might be a daring choice for such a program, but this book\nis exactly the collection to appeal to experienced readers of poetry as well as\nreaders who believe they don\u2019t like poetry. Its content is compelling and its\ncharacters are sympathetic, as in the best fiction, yet its craft is both\nskillful and subtle. Reading and rereading this book has been exceptionally\nsatisfying. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cindy Hunter Morgan. Harborless. Wayne State University Press, 2017. 65 pgs. $16.99. Harborless, Cindy Hunter Morgan\u2019s first full-length collection, is unusual in several respects. The book consists of forty poems responding to specific shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, wrecks that often occurred because of weather, of course, but also due to exploding boilers, waterlogged wheat, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20,22,19,23],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek","tag-cindy-hunter-morgan","tag-harborless","tag-lynn-domina","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","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=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}