Flyover Country: Poems: 140 (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets) - Hardcover

Smith, Austin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069118156X ISBN 13: 9780691181561

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

A new collection about violence and the rural Midwest from a poet whose first book was hailed as “memorable” (Stephanie Burt, Yale Review) and “impressive” (Chicago Tribune)

Flyover Country is a powerful collection of poems about violence: the violence we do to the land, to animals, to refugees, to the people of distant countries, and to one another. Drawing on memories of his childhood on a dairy farm in Illinois, Austin Smith explores the beauty and cruelty of rural life, challenging the idea that the American Midwest is mere “flyover country,” a place that deserves passing over. At the same time, the collection suggests that America itself has become a flyover country, carrying out drone strikes and surveillance abroad, locked in a state of perpetual war that Americans seem helpless to stop.

In these poems, midwestern barns and farmhouses are linked to other lands and times as if by psychic tunnels. A poem about a barn cat moving her kittens in the night because they have been discovered by a group of boys resonates with a poem about the house in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis. A poem beginning with a boy on a farmhouse porch idly swatting flies ends with the image of people fleeing before a drone strike. A poem about a barbwire fence suggests, if only metaphorically, the debate over immigration and borders. Though at times a dark book, the collection closes with a poem titled “The Light at the End,” suggesting the possibility of redemption and forgiveness.

Building on Smith’s reputation as an accessible and inventive poet with deep insights about rural America, Flyover Country also draws profound connections between the Midwest and the wider world.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Austin Smith grew up on a family dairy farm in northwestern Illinois. He is the author of a previous poetry collection, Almanac (Princeton), and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, and many other publications. He teaches at Stanford University and lives in Oakland, California.

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Flyover Country

Poems

By Austin Smith

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2018 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-18156-1

Contents

To Go to Lena, 1, 
I, 
Into the Corn, 7, 
Fences, 9, 
The Raccoon Tree, 11, 
Cat Moving Kittens, 12, 
Beyond Mirror Lake, 13, 
The Windbreak, 15, 
American Glue Factory, 17, 
Chekhov, 18, 
Three Radios, 20, 
Hired Hands, 22, 
Water Witching, 24, 
Apparition of Knives, 26, 
Scrapper Kevin, 27, 
The Vampire, 29, 
Building a Temple for the Field Mice, 30, 
Father and Son: Barcelona, 32, 
Grasshoppers, 33, 
Some Haiku Found Scrawled in the Margins of The Old Farmer's Almanac 1957, 34, 
II, 
The Mechanic's Children, 39, 
The Shaker Abecedarius, 40, 
The Streets of Turin, 41, 
Outside the Anne Frank House, 43, 
The Crutches at Lourdes, 45, 
The Only Tavern in Hyde, Wisconsin, 46, 
The Spider, 48, 
Factory Town, 49, 
Street Performer: Asheville, North Carolina, 51, 
The Bow, 52, 
Cottonpicker, 54, 
Atomic Fireball, 55, 
Soap Operas, 56, 
The Blind, 57, 
The Bombing of Hospitals, 58, 
Wounded Men Seldom Come Home to Die, 60, 
Elegy for Thomas Merton, 62, 
Premature Elegy for Claude Eatherly, 65, 
We Defy Augury, 66, 
The Man without Oxen Trembles, 67, 
Swatting Flies, 69, 
That Particular Village, 71, 
Drone, 74, 
The Witness Tree, 76, 
III, 
Cicadas, 81, 
Flyover Country, 83, 
Dark Day, 85, 
White Lie, 87, 
The Capacity of Speech, 88, 
N Judah, 89, 
Break in the Weather, 90, 
Dead Dogs, 92, 
Growing Cold, 94, 
Lament of the Man Who Picks Up Dead Animals, 96, 
Country Things, 97, 
Ode to Flour, 99, 
Things We Don't Often Think Of, 101, 
Film of the Building of a Coffin Viewed in Reverse, 103, 
The Twain, 105, 
Feathers, 107, 
The Light at the End, 108, 
Notes, 111, 
Acknowledgments, 113, 

CHAPTER 1

INTO THE CORN

In summer we were warned not to enter it
If the tassels were head-high or higher
Lest we get lost like the boy who went in
After a ball called foul and never came out

Whose parents must have been decades dead
But who himself had not aged a day
Who runs bases wherever farm boys say
Ghost man oh ghost man we need you!

Out of longing to enter it we reached in
The leaves slicing our arms like the knife
My mother used to slash the risen dough
Wrenching the ears off the stalks

Like twisting doorknobs in the dark
We held them to our own ears grinning
Before turning serious and regretful
For through them we had heard the boy laughing

And as we brusquely shucked the husks
Like village grandmothers sitting in doorways
Down to the slick light green inner leaves
We longed for the moist dark that seemed to us

One of the privileges of being born as corn
But not knowing this longing was common
We held the silk under our armpits instead
And laughed at the long joke of adolescence

We were soon to be the punchlines of
While privately recalling the pubic hair
Of women we'd seen in porn magazines
Found in a bag of trash at the farm's edge

When the tender kernels were exposed
In their wavering rows we gnawed them
Like they were sweet corn picked
Up at the roadside stand for supper

Boiled in sugar-water buttered and salted
To be spun on the lathes of our hands
And when we'd bitten off more than
We could chew we snapped

The cobs clean in half
So as to see the pith and believe
We'd gone at least as far into the corn
As that boy who'd disappeared had


FENCES

Some to separate
Pasture from pasture in order
To clarify the prairie,

Others to surround the farm,
Keeping the world
Out and the herd in.

Between the barbs designed
To bloom at intervals
Measuring the span of a hand,

Redwing blackbirds scolded
Both nations of grass
The fence divided.

The posts that stood
Where they'd been driven
Knee-deep in limestone

Had begun to lean
Like men forced to march
Into the wind.

And where oak saplings
Had had the audacity to grow,
They'd had no choice

But to swallow the wire,
Remembering via rings
The anniversary of that first summer

They sensed the wire tapping
Their bodies, then began,
Tentatively, to accept it,

To take it in, feeling
The wire grow taut
In the grip of their bark,

Until they began to believe
They needed it
In order to stand.


THE RACCOON TREE

Winter to winter
We could never quite remember
Where in the woods it was,
And so would have to find it again,
Part of me doubting it
Had ever existed.
But then there it would be,
The oak with the dark
Slit in its side, darker if
The ground around it
Was aglow with snow.
Elbowing one another to peer in,
We thought the tree empty
Until our eyes adjusted.
Then would appear
The pair of green eyes,
Then the telltale mask
And ringed tail, this creature
Who every winter
Hid in fear of us
Boys who came without fail
To fill its world
With breath and darkness.


CAT MOVING KITTENS

We must have known,
Even as we reached
Down to touch them
Where we'd found them

Shut-eyed and trembling
Under a straw bale
In the haymow, that
She would move them

That night under cover
Of darkness, and that
By finding them
We were making certain

We wouldn't see them again
Until we saw them
Crouching under the pickup
Like sullen teens, having gone

As wild by then as they'd gone
Still in her mouth that night
She made a decision
Any mother might make

Upon guessing the intentions
Of the state: to go and to
Go now, taking everything
You love between your teeth.


BEYOND MIRROR LAKE

Left the city before the first sirens.
Crossed the bridge, crossed the valley,
Its blossoming orchards and dormant crosses.
Let the car carry me against the streams
Running the other way, as if they knew something
I didn't. Reached Yosemite. Paid my fee. Left keys,
Wallet, phone, everything identifying me behind
And started up the path to Mirror Lake.
Passed tourists taking selfies, backpackers consulting maps.
Beyond the lake: no one. The trail narrowing, the light
Floating up the sheer cliffs, leaving the valley
In shadow. A branch held a blue flannel shirt
Out for me. It gave me a chill, being offered clothes
Clear out there, but it was nothing compared
To the chill a dead oak gave me like a ring
Last worn by the dead. I stopped
As if ordered to, having never seen a tree
Tremble like that tree was trembling, the tambourines
Of its dry leaves rattling in a breeze that didn't stir
Those of any other tree. The thing that spooked me
About the leaves was how perfect they were even though
They were dead, like the willow motif carved
Into the headboard of my childhood bed.
It was as if they were trying to pass for living leaves
And in so doing betrayed the tree, like stars
Sewn onto clothing. The tree seemed to be shivering
And I felt I had come to the place where
The earth fears for herself. This fear was nothing
Like our fear of terror or the warming of the planet
But a wordless, private fear we were never
Meant to know. And I felt like a boy who,
Hearing a strange sound upstairs, climbs
The steps and sees, through the keyhole,
His father weeping, and knows that
What has always been so
Certain will never be certain again.


THE WINDBREAK

The morning after the evening
He came home early to tell us
The radiologist had seen something
In the X-rays of his lungs
I decided to clear the tangle
Of nightshade and thorns
That grew under the pines
Like I was erasing scribble
The brush fought back at first
Threw birds at my eyes
Rolled rabbits at my legs
But I angled the chainsaw in severing
The whole mess at the root
And dragged it out like people
In hiding betrayed by a cough
I wanted all that growth gone
So we could see clear through
The windbreak to Winneshiek Road
The pile of limbs grew and within
A week the blue-pink pines
Sprang clean out of the brown
Needle-strewn ground
But while waiting for a day
The wind was right to light
The pile on fire I began regretting
What I'd done the mass eviction
I'd served innocent creatures
In the dead of winter
The rabbits seeking refuge
In the asylum of the snow
The birds flown to other farms
Nothing stood between us now
And the plow-scoured road
Down which he came the evening
I set the pile on fire
To tell us that
The young radiologist had made a mistake
It was nothing
A blemish on the X-ray
And I spent the whole next day
Shoveling ashes


AMERICAN GLUE FACTORY

for Rachel Carson

All your childhood you watched
Old horses file up a wooden ramp
Into the American Glue Factory
And file out as smoke.
This was in Springdale, Pennsylvania,
Up the Allegheny from Pittsburgh,
In the early part of the twentieth century.
Though it was never mentioned, you knew
What the horses were being turned into.
In your desk at school was a bottle
You used to join this and that
To this and that. You knew horses
Were what hung the gold and silver
Stars in the firmament of your notebook,
What made the hearts stick
In the valentine you never gave
That girl at school. Summer nights
The stench of burning
Horses drove you into the house
From the screen porch where you sat
Reading about the sea.
It was there you first learned that
Something in the air can close a story.


CHEKHOV

They say you may have caught
Tuberculosis from the peasants
Who came to Melikhovo

To be seen by you. Hearing them
Coughing in the hall, you put down
Your pen and rose from your desk.

Short of breath, they had traveled
All night to arrive by dawn, drawn
By rumors of your kindness.

While you warmed the stethoscope
In your hands and the old farmer
Bared his chest, your character

Stood patiently on the doorstep,
Holding a letter of introduction
You had yet to write. The longer

You spent away from the story
The harder it would be to finish it,
But the hall was long, the line

Out the door, and you would turn
None away, knowing how far
They had come for the comfort

Of having someone
Listen to their lungs and say it
Sounded better than it sounded

While you stood breathing
In their sighs of relief,
Saying, softly, "Next."


THREE RADIOS

December 7th, 1941

It balanced on a beam above
My grandfather where he sat
Milking sixteen Holsteins
By hand in stanchions.

When he heard the words
Pearl Harbor over the jets
Of milk ringing in the pail,
Their markings seemed to him
White archipelagos
In black water.

November 22nd, 1963

It stood in the living room,
As significant a presence
As any piece of furniture,
A piece of furniture that talked
To my grandmother of the world
While she polished wood.

When, at one in the afternoon,
It pronounced the president dead,
She shushed it
And anointed it with lemon oil.

September 11th, 2001

Manure-spattered, it sat
On a shelf along the wall
Of the pit parlor.

Over the churning
Of the milking machines
My father heard the anchor
Cry out when the second plane
Struck the other tower.

Only then did he turn
The radio up, the antenna
Trained violently toward town.


HIRED HANDS

Hired hands of my grandfather's
Time haunt me. They come floating
Through the doorframes of meth
Houses on the verge of exploding,
Touching at the pale wrists
Just above where they've been snipped
Like two hyacinths. They follow me
Into the barn I've slipped into
To look for something, I've forgotten
What. Their ring fingers are
Ringless but the hands are married
To one another. They make
For my hair, tousle it, then fly
Up into the rafters like two doves
Or one owl. From down here
I can just make out the harvest
Moons of the bones. Somewhere
In the poisoned dirt of this county
A man my grandfather hired
In 1957 out of pity for his wife
And kids waiting anxiously in the car
Lies handless in his coffin,
Having not yet awoken to the fact
His hands are in the habit of leaving him.
Oh but who can blame them
For wanting to go out
Pickpocketing? They take
Nothing valuable. And I for one
Understand their need to feel
Up the thin summer dresses
Billowing under the church pews.
The young women know
It is only the breath of God.
When they've had their fun,
The hands let themselves back in
To the cheap motel room
Of the grave, opening the door
Quietly so as not to wake him.
For if he were to learn that
His hands have been leaving him,
He would find a way to follow
Them into the world
And make some real trouble.


WATER WITCHING

A pipe burst in the night.
Our father dug all morning.
At noon he climbed out
Of the earth and went in
To call the man who finds water.

He came out in the evening,
A wizard with his beard
And forked wand of willow.
A bachelor, he had never
Found a wife, spent his life

In search of water. Our father
Told us to watch him
As if we might learn something,
Or as if he was not to be trusted,
And went off to bring the cows in.

We watched him walk slowly
Back and forth, the wand
So light in his hand it seemed
To flinch with some invisible power.
Sometimes he stopped as if listening.

Finally, as if admitting failure,
He beckoned us, asked
Did we have anything
In our pockets? I offered him
An old pocketknife seized

With rust. He opened
The reluctant blade and, kneeling,
Stabbed it into the grass to mark where
We should dig. And when I tried
To close the knife, I couldn't.


APPARITION OF KNIVES

Stuck in the side of a barn outside Lanark
Are eighteen knives in the shape of a woman.
Rust streaks on the wall make it seem
As if she is veiled and perpetually rising.
The blades are plunged so deep in the boards
The points stick through the other side
And glitter in the dark like stars.
The wood handles are long enough for pigeons
To perch on. If you approach this apparition
Of knives, they will take wing in a flock
That roughly approximates her. No one knows
Who threw the knives, or who volunteered
To stand against the wall to give the one
Who threw them a body to trace. The only ones
Who visit the apparition are teenage lovers
Who take turns taking pictures of each other
Framed in knives and a priest who believes that
No human hand threw them, that the knives
Slipped out of the drawers of farmhouse kitchens
And hovered over the pasture in formation
Like fighter jets before plunging together
Into the wall. It is said that if you pull a knife
Out you will bleed to death the next time
You cut yourself. It is said also that once
Upon a time there were nineteen knives.


SCRAPPER KEVIN

They call me Scrapper Kevin,
You know why?
It's how I make a living.
Scrap metal.
Can't fault a guy for making a living
Any way a guy can.
But people around here,
A lot of 'em hate me.
That guy there, for instance.
Jesus Christ
Don't look at him.
That guy's here to kill me.
There's a hit out on me see.
See there's this pond in the woods
Back there, you don't know it,
Don't nobody know it
Until they go in there.
People miss the curve
And go right clear
Through the brush.
There's gotta be ten,
A dozen cars in there,
Some with bodies in 'em,
Bodies still in 'em.
Everybody knows that.
You don't gotta be a genius.
This guy who put the hit out on me,
His daughter drowned in there.
She was texting him.
He's the one started the rumor
I've been dragging cars up out of there,
Selling 'em for cash.
He hired that guy there
To kill me. That's why
I'm talking to you
So's not to give him the chance.
Their plan's to throw me in there,
See how I like it.
Don't think I don't know.
This here's a small town,
La Honda's a small town.
I swear to God, I don't care
How broke I get,
I'll never go in there.
Can you imagine?
Those bodies in there,
Years some of them
Bodies been in there.
I know what they must look like.
I'm from Michigan.
Every winter some kids'd get drunk
And drive out on the ice,
Thinking it was thick enough
To hold 'em.
I wouldn't go in that water
To save my life
But I'm not gonna lie.
Sometimes driving by I think
Man all that metal.


THE VAMPIRE

The poor man probably just worked third-shift
at Honeywell where they made light switches
before the outsourcing, but we convinced ourselves that
Behind the drawn yellow curtains the color
of mustard and the signs in the yard admonishing us
to keep out lived a vampire. Across the street
sprawled Lincoln Cemetery, and maybe this is why
I imagined that like Lincoln the vampire was tall
and gaunt, lying long in a coffin he had built himself.
How deep must the sleep of small-town vampires be
so similar to the sleep of weary fathers, or of men
who've lost sons, who sleep in the light of the muted
world news, for whom our dusk is dawn and our
dawn dusk, who it isn't true drink one vial of blood
every evening as some swear by one glass of red
wine to conclude the rude workday with a little grace,
who don't visit the new graves in fresh thirst,
who are not evil and don't deserve to die gasping
around the silver letter opener of a hero. I'm not
glad we threw the rock through his window and ran.
I'm not glad we woke the vampire. I don't hope
the sudden inrush of light killed him. Trust me,
the sick motherfucker probably a father holding
his son's purple heart or a very tired man crying
in his bed littered with glass deserved to die.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Flyover Country by Austin Smith. Copyright © 2018 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069118156X
• ISBN 13: 9780691181561
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 128
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar