Karen Skolfield. Frost in the Low Areas. Clarksville, TN: Zone 3 Press, 2013. 96 pages. $14, paper.

Karen Skolfield is an optimist without being a Pollyanna, a cynic without being a misanthrope. Her narrative poems have the tone of actual conversation; we feel as if we’re listening to a good friend tell us something she’s never before revealed about herself. In Frost in the Low Areas, Skolfield’s remarkable first collection, her poems tackle such issues as motherhood, marriage, death, and what it means to be the product of a dysfunctional family.

The optimist in Skolfield doesn’t want to dwell too long on negative details. In “Ode to a Fan,” for example, the speaker makes a passing comment about her father’s abuse. She confesses to stealing his favorite fan after he kicks her out, her dad “telling me I was no longer welcome there / how he hated my life, maybe because / I’d never slept with him.” She quickly changes the subject, attempting to divert our attention. “But this,” she says, “is about the fan, the green fan / that I hid under blankets in the back / of my lover’s gigantic truck.” Later in the poem, she again mentions a trauma, when she says, “I didn’t speak to my family for a long time / until the cancer thing,” and again she refuses to dwell on this piece of information. We don’t mind not learning more about the cancer thing, though. The story she tells us is amusing, and we enjoy the bit of revenge she has on her father, as she pretends to have no idea about the fan’s whereabouts. Her voice is clear and honest and her wit is sharp. “I like to think I’m contributing to his nightmares,” she tells us, and we like to think so, too.

This tactic of diverting her audience is even more apparent in “Rumors of Her Death have been Greatly Exaggerated,” when offhand she mentions death to her young children. “Mistake one: driving by two cemeteries when the kids / are tired,” she says. “Mistake two: saying only some people get / buried. Where are the others, my son asks.” She then finds herself trying to sidetrack them with thoughts of Christmas, snow, and stray dogs, though her kids are now stuck in their worry about their parents dying. Her children, unlike her readers, refuse to be distracted by her artful diversions.

Skolfield’s poems are steeped in strange and lovely metaphors, particularly when discussing motherhood. In the opening poem “Where Babies Come From,” for example, she writes,

I thought they were handing me a baby,
but it’s a star in my arms, a very small one,
just born. Whoever said they twinkle has never
held one. It’s blue and not very warm,
and though I don’t know a thing about stars,
I start to worry. I give a tickle, blow on it,
sing a little song, all my tricks. The star
perks up, then settles into me, like it belongs.

In “Second House, Careful in the Drive,” she says, “It seems as if everyone but me was born / knowing to hold a child by the wrist instead / of their small, slippery fingers. The distance / from any sidewalk to the whir of cars is exactly one / Emily long.” Those of us who are mothers recognize in these poems the fear that we are always a little inadequate for the job.

Karen Skolfield’s ease with narrative and extended metaphor occasionally brings to mind the poet Elizabeth Bishop. * In “Lost Mountain,” for example, Skolfield writes, “I hate when I misplace entire geographical features.” She continues,

Next the savannah, or really just a portion
of the savannah, I don’t want my muddle-
headedness out of proportion, yes it was large
enough for two lion prides and their prey,
but it wasn’t the whole thing. Slipped behind
the couch, as savannahs sometimes do,
and it wasn’t until the vultures started circling
that I knew, and what a shock then to find
the savannah, which honestly no one had missed,
instead of the ice cap, which we talked about
every day.

These lines recall Bishop’s villanelle, “One Art,” in which the poet states, “I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, / some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.” Of course, Bishop isn’t overly concerned about losing these places. Skolfield’s slightly defensive tone – “The salt flat was not my fault” – betrays her sense of guilt over what she’s lost.

Elizabeth Bishop once said, “If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I’m sure it’s a good one.” The world still looks like much of Karen Skolfield’s Frost in the Low Areas. She reminds us in “Other People Fantasize about Big Boats,” that whatever our dysfunctions and whomever we’ve lost, family is like paper stapled together, “attached firmly, forever, to each other.”

More about this poet:

Karen Skolfield’s book Frost in the Low Areas (2013) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press, and is a Massachusetts “Must Read” selection for 2014. She is a 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow and winner of the 2014 Split This Rock poetry prize. Skolfield is the poetry editor for Amherst Live and a contributing editor at the literary magazines Tupelo Quarterly and Stirring. She teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts. Find her online at http://www.karenskolfield.blogspot.com/.

* I never read other reviews of the books I write about for my blog, because I want to draft reviews free from other people’s opinions. After writing this review, however, I stumbled upon this article about Elizabeth Bishop’s influence on Karen Skolfield’s book. Athena Kierkegard sees Elizabeth Bishop as “a guiding spirit behind” Frost in the Low Areas.

I’m very excited to participate in Poetry in Art, an upcoming art and poetry exhibition at Riverside Artists Gallery in Marietta, OH. For this collaboration among regional artists and writers, each artist was asked to select a poem as inspiration for his or her art. The artwork and poetry will be on display at the gallery October 10th – 31st.

The opening is Friday, October 10th, 6 – 9, with a poetry reading that begins at 7 p.m.

The participating poets are Wilma Acree, Jann Adams, Peg Clifford, Chris Friend, Sally Pebler Hannan, Becca J.R. Lachman, Martha McGovern, Wendy McVicker, Jean Mikhail, Nellie Hufford Ruby, Lynne Bodry Schuman, Susan Sheppard, Scott H. Urban, Christina Veladota, and Kristine Williams.

The artists are Scott Bookman, Robin Brandjes, Thaddeus Brejwo, Betsy Cook, Debbie Dick, Ginny Killian, Marlene L’Abbe, Jennifer Lasko, George Longfellow, Jen McKenna, Akemi Matsumoto, Todd Morrow, Gwen Noe, Cathy Norosky, Anna Prince, Bonnie Proudfoot, Lynda Rhodes, Melissa Rohrer, Jane Ryals, and Geoff Shenkel.

Riverside Arts Gallery is located at 219 Second Street, Marietta, OH.

Occasions

the girl sleeps on her belly,
hands down her underpants. two fingers
   outside butterfly kick—one for each
   soft fold till
she catches the hem of sleep.

*
sometimes a pillow
against her pelvis—rocking hips
faster and faster.
  sleep comes.

*
at nine a friend shows her how
to squeeze a sock
  down her panties, rub
against the mattress.
she poses in front of the mirror
hands on her hips
    bulge on display.

*
in her mother’s back massager
   she finds what was missing—
the widest eyes, the taut
cords of pelvis.

*
in college she reads on the internet
how to use a faucet. she runs
   a warm bath
   legs against the wall.
she listens to the rush.
she lets her hands float.

*
she is a woman
   who knows
   her own body, prefers
the solace of cool sheets or
fluorescent water, this
  jar of bees
between her thighs.

Of  “Occasions,” Laura Davis says,

I wrote this poem for multiple reasons (I was in a long distance relationship at the time, so take that as you will…). I’ve always written about female sexuality and the body, and I use poems to examine my own history with my body. Female pleasure isn’t depicted enough in any medium, and when it is it’s considered explicit, or pornographic even. Why is that? As far as submitting this poem, I wrote it in 2011 and according to Duotrope it’s been rejected seven times, which is hardly anything. I sent this poem out less frequently because poems about sex are often relegated to themed issues or topical anthologies. Guess I was even censoring myself. That says something about how ingrained our attitudes toward female sexuality are.

More About the Poet:

Laura E. Davis is the author of the chapbook Braiding the Storm (Finishing Line, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Luna Luna, Toad, Corium, and others. The founding editor of Weave Magazine. Laura teaches for Poetry Inside Out, a K-12 a bilingual poetry program in San Francisco.

Photo (see above): Laura Davis’ writing space

Sarah Marcus. Backcountry. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2013. 29 pages. $14, paper.

Sarah Marcus’ first chapbook, Backcountry, is a lovely and frightening narrative strung together by a series of vignettes. Evocative and lyrical, these poems tell the story of addiction in many forms: addiction to narcotics, to other people, and to a wilderness full of fire and animals both dead and feral.

In the title poem, the speaker portrays a couple at odds over the man’s desire to strike out into the wild on his own. The woman works hard to convince him to stay:

You need a permit, she says. He nods, considers the map and two
weeks without poker. Bear country, where packs of wolves

follow their weakening prey. It is important to make noise
on the trail, avoid carcasses, stream crossings

are always deeper than they seem, faster, rougher.
Throw me in, she says, and leave me there. You know I want

to be there with you more than anything in the world, he tells her,
it’s just not possible. Animals die in geyser basins in the winter,

she tells him, their carcasses eaten by grizzlies emerging from
winter dens—killed by the heat they thought would save them.

In tackling the issue of addiction, the speaker makes frequent reference to drug abuse. In “Recovery,” for example, we learn, “Meth free for nine years now, she looks at herself // mirrored minus eight. All she’s ever wanted / was for someone to be angry for her.” In “Register,” the speaker tells us, “Him banging intravenous / injections, she wants to know what happens // when there are no registers left. She wonders how / he could stick the needles into his hands, arms, legs.” In the poem, “Abscess,” we see the couple in a room at the Hilton. “In the morning she carefully fingers his track marks— / once abscessed, still dark and delicate.” In this way, the speaker deftly weaves us through a perilous terrain of addiction, love, and recovery.

One fascinating aspect of this book is the perspective of the speaker, which switches near the end. The majority of the poems are in the third person, but the final five are in the first, which is jarring in the best sense of the word. For most of the chapbook, the speaker is detached, is the person telling the story, not a person in the story. With the introduction of the first person, the reader feels suddenly face-to-face with the speaker, drawn into an unexpected intimacy.

When this occurs, the slight shift in tone is notable. “She’s grown quiet when making love,” the speaker reports in “When you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart.” “She’s always out riding // and never at home. She’s annoyed they’ve hiked all these / miles to have the same conversation they’ve had at their kitchen // table hundreds of times before.” By the time we reach the final poem, which I include here in its entirety, we are confronted by the speaker’s beautiful and sad vulnerability.

But Mostly They Were Bears

We linger near the mouths of caves,
track footprints till dusk descends—
people have followed these trails
for thousands of years and from you
all I want is a few words.

I am rock sheltered
between you
and the carvings
that read me to sleep
and I dream of
following the bears
across continents—

the way we’ve lived
together pretending
as if the land bridge isn’t long gone.

A skinned bear
looks like a human corpse.
I am as much bear
as you are.

If we don’t make it down
I want to make sure
our bones are interred together
in the same grave.

I want you to tell them
I was a bear and I am
laid with bears.
And you were the one,
strapped with meat,
so pregnant you crawled back.

In Backcountry, Sarah Marcus knits together brief scenes from a troubled relationship and creates a narrative that is as harrowing – and as heartbreaking – as it is unforgettable. She depicts this relationship very much as she depicts the natural world: in all its terrifying violence. In doing so, she reminds us that love is a place to which we often wish to escape, but when dark and tumultuous, it’s a place from which we may never crawl back.

More about this poet:

Sarah Marcus is the author of BACKCOUNTRY (2013, Finishing Line Press) and Every Bird, To You (2013, Crisis Chronicles Press). Her other work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Cimarron Review, CALYX Journal, Spork, Nashville Review, Slipstream, Luna Luna, and Bodega, among others. She is an editor at Gazing Grain Press and a spirited Count Coordinator for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. She holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University and currently teaches and writes in Cleveland, OH. Find her at sarahannmarcus.com.

Note on Formatting: In the poem “Backcountry,” included in full at the beginning of this review, the lines run a bit long. In a few instances, a single word ends up alone on a line. This is not the intention of the poet.