Floating About on a Liquid Interior is a book-length series of poems mined from a book about mining. The poems were found John McPhee's masterful, Pulitzer Prize winning account of geological history, Annals of the Former World. (Mr. McPhee has read these poems and has given his permission for their publication.)
I opened Mr. McPhee’s book at random and wrote one poem from each page on which I landed. The words in each poem—including titles—appear only in the order they appeared in McPhee’s writing. A few phrases were extracted whole, but most were assembled by me from the rich ore of his syntax and diction.
In part because Mr. McPhee spent considerable time with the geologist David Love, a human narrative glints through these poems, suggesting three main characters: a woman (noted in the first person), a man (indicated by “he” or “you”), and Love, a force that, in this story, sometimes takes the male pronoun.
I realized after writing this book that the alienation between these characters echoes the alienation of us plundering humans from our earth.
*
Floating About on a Liquid Interior
Western Africa could lock itself tight
around the horn of Brazil
—these originally conjoined—
and again some catastrophe
rent asunder
the ocean between them.
Likewise
I am indebted to
a jigsaw fit and likeness.
Its infancy
years away
plowed like ice
through solid basalt.
Yet no one believed.
*
I Once Stood Looking East
at all of it converging, the drop
was giddy. Below
the pass in deep winter, I
have stayed a guest.
The scenery owes less to finishing than
to pouring, varying levels
in unexpected places.
To sense structure,
one must develop a talent for seeing through—
*
Across Deposits and Badlands
In the slow lane seagulls headed home.
We traversed the theme, predictable—
Love looks for wealth
in exploitable rock Love turns over.
Love carries within, me, beset
by contradictory interests, inevitable clutter.
*
Between Studs and Siding
The chase becomes hot, desperate.
But a running is expected to end.
Spinach in the yard.
Forge and anvil.
The creek, a Russian olive,
a balm of Gilead.
What does never mean?
I ask.
Love was used to storing.
Now its door was swinging in the wind.
We looked in. He said nothing.
*
Attempts to Extract
We are at the mercy, Love said.
It’s called colonization.
Scene after scene returning
to this theme:
Love is a prospector.
He will follow his instincts.
And he is a frequent lecturer.
Thus he carries within him a spectrum of paradox.
Beset by contradictory interests,
he cares passionately for energy
words and images and what you can see
through dimming tracts of time.
*
In the Process It Makes Sense to Imagine the Mother
A living town just uphill.
A white wooden church,
its paint peeling.
A sign that says “bait.”
Roadcuts. The intrinsic bond
and its relationship to the serpentine.
A headlight, a brake, a drum.
Such spreading
and subduction, not to mention
the consumption.
Still Intact Were the Subtle Flanges That Had Caused the Roulette Wheel to Stop
Where the dealer kept wild cards,
Love received his education.
They came for three months in summer,
the boys, taught by their mother.
The child saw sunbeams,
thought contents. Chaos
in this house of men.
Mental Problems.
Figures on large cards.
The lessons stopped, she sewed up the boy.
*
“A Blunder”
The two sides lie open like butterfly wings and are immense.
(Throughout, ice acquired while underwater.)
Running through over beside, we cross
and moments later close and parallel,
steepness breaks,
goes right through.
The sea, it
came up and drowned.
*
Food Stayed Cold All Summer
The cellar was vacant.
Love walked silently from room to room.
Resources would hereafter be employed
to fortify present possessions.
The cupboards were two feet deep
in pack-rat debris:
correspondence, information, journeys to green hindsight.
*
One Has to Settle
I put my foot to the ground.
The shovel broke in half.
After that, I had to hold its head in my hands.
There’s more to this than reversals,
more than just determining when, and whether.
You can tell from the more subtle positions.
Facts perceived confirmed the origins
but did not resolve the mystery
because there seemed to be two
equal explanations:
either the rock had moved
or the whole earth.
About Me
- Rachel Jamison Webster
- I grew up in the small town of Madison, Ohio, and now live in Evanston, IL, where I am an Artist in Residence (in poetry) at Northwestern University. I also edit the online anthology of international poetry, UniVerse, located at www.universeofpoetry.org. My poems have been published in many journals, including Poetry, The Southern Review, The Madison Review, Perihelion and blossombones, and I have won a few awards for my writing and teaching, including an Academy of American Poets' Young Poets Prize. For several years, I created and taught writing workshops for city teens, and in this capacity, co-edited two anthologies of writing by Chicago youth, Alchemy (2001) and Paper Atrium (2005). I have my MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. I am happy to give readings or workshops, and may be contacted at r-webster@northwestern.edu. Thank you for reading, and best wishes to you.
Books