Undoing
in becoming in this her fourth full-length collection, poet
Claudia Keelan eclipses the strident formal innovation of
2000's Utopic (also Alice James Books) w/ a sensitivity
to new music afforded her organic poethic that permits the
advent of a return--a pentimento of said innovation fused w/
the lyrical connaissance of the poet's earlier work. No longer
is the personal (the I, the you) a DMZ :: maps & signposts
are simply a way to go :: "What's left us Attached
/ & adventing" :: The Devotion Field ranges
wide…
::
Wm. James' feeling of of
::
resistance vs. illegitimate government / national identity
(what was turned is,
malformed,
bellicose, imperialistic)
::
antinomian contention w/ received tradition, humans, husbands, &
muses
::
of a mind to in a mind to give :: is of
::
love :: primacy of :: this :: plurality :: "Of
& Among…"
A
locus(t)--Keelan burrows into the sod of Amurrika's tirepackt
history (liberation campaign of this polis, new bright city
reinvigorated) & chisels free the stony particulars of
monuments. From Devotion Field's first declaration of
interdependence, "Day Book":
Looked
inside An
American soul An Amer
I
can soul inside
I
found An
art museum
Where
my millions died (1)
&
in "the verb auction" that follows any epoch, any
event in "these historic times" (per our present
tengallon scoundrel scion), any invested citizen must
participate--& so goes Keelan, in pursuit of,
ranging through the field ("is what knowledge is"),
in search of the "single sun [that] illumines"
inside every body.
Passage
& pursuit :: poet's Georgics :: complaint &
question, alternative, commence
From
Continental Congress to Birmingham to Academe, any thing de//ie,
con-, noun//fined comes under question, underhand, not
grateful for the bullshit dead, "Kicking inside the
Godhead / Kicking inside the work": commitment to
passage. The work.
Walk
through the doors,
An
I in an of--
Even
if in seems imperfectly done,
Do
not give up imperfectly. (26)
A
devotion to change & action, as bodies forth the world, in
synthetic (ie, squamous, plural) gna/ledge, guides these
peripatetics; a devotion to & of change ::
"Phenomenon Nuptial" :: allegiance lost & reborn
in the worlding now :: "The Sybil's Afterlife" ::
"I met myself & left / With me & she came home
forever changed." (37) Passage through a "hole in
the beam," into that space where definition can be
defied, revised & enacted in perpetuum.
&
yes, Mr. Ashberry, there is a quotidian of an among…here
beautifully sung.
cf.
"Heredity":
I
did not die into a new heart.
Dying
was the heart
&
you who took our son's cut hair
&
sprinkled it among the flowers--
Of
suns, flowers are made.
I
is there, his hair
spiraling
through a flower.
Nothing
new, just a purple flower. (50)
&
the dynamo of challenge & change :: organic & active
world of ideas ::
The
gaps I
mean / I put
them […] / Love broke the line / & s/he was free (57)
Service,
service of the world, / Vision of God-- / Not separate things,
just different. (61)
In
this new challenge to a priori form, even as relates to
the poet's own methods (here, confident in her devotion, in
commitment to breath & action), the questions Keelan
poses--from her I (imperfectly) in an of-to "a country
going down, / In the aftermath of its occasion" (54) find
their only most suitable alternative in antiphony, plurality:
Be
a moth in your life
Be
a quick movement among flowers
Bloom
(65)
