[Maryann Corbett]

Disenchantment Bay


Touch and go. Our Cessna bumped the sand,
.... thumped its tundra tires,
.... lifted as if on wires,
banked over ice and rocked its wings to land.

We pitched our camp hard by the Hubbard's face,
.... some sixty fathoms tall,
.... a seven-mile-long wall
seven leagues from Yakutat, our base.

Crack! A blue serac tottered and gave.
.... Stunned at the water's edge,
.... we fled our vantage ledge
like oystercatchers skittering from a wave.

Now separation has become my fear.
.... What was does not console,
.... what is, is past control--
the disembodiment that looms so near.

Detachment? So an ice cliff by the sea
.... calves with a seismic crash
.... of bergy bits and brash,
choking a waterway with its debris.

We clear the neap tide beach of glacial wrack,
.... pace and mark the ground,
.... then wave the Cessna round.
Pilot, we bank on you to bear us back.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Marvelous vehicle (that time the pun was intended), as far as choice of form and its execution. The sounds are incomparable in this piece. Having a weakness for sibilants, I especially love S2. The oystercatchers, also, are a standout for me, the psychological mystique between that line and the next section mildly unsettling.

The specifics are what make this. I think I'm reading a professional here, who is using the universal for theme, feeling and ethic, but grounding in the personal.

Terrific close. I am reminded of Tennyson's "I hope to see my Pilot face to face..."

[Jennifer Reeser]

PS -- I doubt this title. Call me a skeptic! ;-)

[Susan McLean]

I pick up a very adept use of double meanings and extended metaphor in this one, which gives it a lot of power. I like it.

Susan

[Janice D. Soderling]

I remember this one too. There was page after page of discussion on it. Turned out quite neat, but it was like pulling teeth!!!

[Petra Norr]

I've never mixed pentameter and trimeter lines, but I imagine it must be very hard to do that without falling into the trap of having the shorter lines act as mere transitional lines with no real substance and integrity of line. This poet has no problems at all with that. I don't think there's a dead line here; each line says something and carries the poem forward. I very much admire the craft here, the composition, the way the "story" is told, and the active/dynamic touches that let me see what's happening. I also love S4, and of course, the allusion to that greater "Pilot" in the last line.
On a side note, the glacial "lingo" fascinates and charms. I recognized "calves" so I knew it wasn't just poetic (though it fits so well into poetry), but not until I looked up "bergy bits" did I discover that it, too, is a genuine term. (While doing that, I came across "growlers", which is equally wonderful.)
An excellent poem.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

I remember remarking at the time that this is one of the best I've ever seen here. It is seaworthy. I love the way the words 'disenchantment' and 'detachment' echo and play off each other, calving meaning. The sounds in S3 are 'stunning'. I love so many individual lines - and this in S3 particularly - "stunned at the water's edge" - fantastic double-meaning to 'edge'.

I never get tired of this poem. The energy in it, and its restlessness - restless like the sea is - energises me.

Cally

[Lance Levens]

The juxtaposition of the glaciologist's manual vocabulary and the end stopped short lines and stanzas demonstrates that a form Edward Lear would feel comfortable with may serve deeper, and more adult purposes. For my taste the metrical demands toward the middle push the author a bit too far beyond the kind of spoken speech brokenness needed to keep the piece anchored in the frozen north. But that's a minor nit. Well done.

[Rick Mullin]

I like the vehicle as well--the tentative landing of the plane bringing us into the "landscape" of the poem, and the faith in the pilot's ability to take us out. The decryptions are tremendous--I feel the cold, and of course I see the ice break and the plane maneuvers. The broader meditation is woven in quite well. The only crack, for me, is “neap tide”, which seems an unnecessary display of specialized language in a poem that has me keyed to its visual elements and already convinced that, as Jennifer intuits, we are in the hands of a pro.

[W.F. Lantry]

I'd never seen this one, but it's easy to guess whose poem it is.

I especially admire the last line:

Pilot, we bank on you to bear us back.

Thanks,

Bill