Anne Myles

Anne Myles on “Lock and Dam No. 10”

The scene portrayed in “Lock and Dam No. 10” took place several years ago. My close friend in California, who was my girlfriend over a decade ago, did visit me in Iowa, and we did spend time in the northeast Iowa river town of Guttenberg, located about an hour and a half from where I live in Waterloo. Beyond that, anything I imply here should be taken as fiction, or at least shaped for the poem’s purposes. (I confess I only learned about the Bible facsimile in the library while working on the poem, and have not yet seen it for myself.)

Though it comes from an earlier memory, this poem will always remind me of 2020, since the only traveling I did during the pandemic year was to the Upper Mississippi. Part of the Driftless Region, it’s a landscape that feels distinctively different from the more typical midwestern farmland that surrounds me, yet it’s close enough to reach without having to stop along the way. A different poem emerged last fall from two trips to the Wisconsin side, where I found the Mississippi taking on life as a personal symbol in a way it had not previously done. In that poem, I mention the river widening and pooling as it’s held back by locks and dams, an image I felt had considerable resonance in my emotional life. It was my MFA advisor who suggested that that motif might be worth exploring further in other poems. That struck me as a promising idea, but the only starting point that came to mind was the Guttenberg visit, along with the childhood memories of fishing with my parents near Chaffey’s Lock on the Rideau Canal in Ontario I layer in. The title reminds me, however, that there are other locks and dams, external or internal, I might yet discover. . . .

Everything takes a long time until what happens next, I write. This has perhaps been truest in my life regarding poetry itself. I lost my connection to poetry for about three decades as I got taken over by academia; if there’s a damming in my life I truly regret, it’s that. However, since poetry returned to me in 2018 things have in fact happened very fast; I left my academic position and am currently in my final semester of MFA work. So much of the inner part of this experience has felt like an effort to unlock, to flow down into the heartland, which also involves not hiding from patterns of loss, longing, and unfulfillment in my relational life. That too is in the poem, of course. And it connects back to the suspended waiting that many of us are experiencing during COVID-19. Something does happen next, but I don’t—we don’t—know exactly what it is.

Poems come to me with a distinct sense of rhythm, syntax, and line, usually very different in each poem—I’d say that’s what I usually encounter first, before phrases or images, and if I don’t hear a particular rhythm it’s very difficult for me to write. I didn’t know exactly what would arrive in this poem in terms of content after I placed two women on the shore overlooking the lock, but I knew I wanted the prose lines, the slow movement, the sentences with their heavy ends—the heat-drugged torpor of an August afternoon, the long wait for the lock to complete its process, what it feels like to think of something you might say and then choose not to. A rhythm of regret, perhaps, but also acceptance, because what else is there?

Thom Tammaro

BEHIND THE LENS: Thom Tammaro ON “Calved Glacier Chunk, Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, Iceland”

Say azure. Say cerulean. Say turquoise. Say maya. Say cornflower. Say ice blue. 

We approached Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon as we drove west, on the last leg of a nine-day drive around the Ring Road (about 850 mi.) that circles the island of Iceland. You will find the lagoon about five-hours (235 mi.) east of Reykjavik. The lagoon—Iceland’s deepest lake at 930 feet—is difficult to miss, as the Ring Road bridge carries you directly over the lagoon, which is then easily accessible, just a short walk from the car park. There is no admission. Consequently, it is one of the most popular tourist stops in Iceland. But don’t let that hinder you from going there. With its milky-white-and-blue coloring, the lagoon is one of the most stunning landscapes in Iceland. Say azure. Say cerulean. Say turquoise. Say maya. Say cornflower. Say ice blue. 

Lagoon icebergs, varying size in the seven square-mile area of the lagoon, are made of 1,000-year-old ice. The lagoon forms naturally from the melting water of Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest glacier. If you are vigilant, you will see giant blocks of white ice “calve” from the glacier tongue as they begin their drift along the 1.5 mi. watery journey that gradually narrows then empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Once they leave the glacial tongue, their color turns milky-white or a brilliant blue. Glacier density—combined with air bubbles trapped within the ice and the dance of light and ice crystals—absorbs all colors of the spectrum except for blue. Some “calves” can reach well-over 100 feet high and just as wide. If you are lucky, you’ll witness huge melting chunks tip over as the warmer water melts the underside of the iceberg as it makes its way to the Atlantic Ocean. And if you’re even luckier, you’ll delight in watching seals swim among the many calved chunks and leap on and off temporary ice floes.

As the ice chunks move toward the Atlantic, wind and warming temperatures sculpt them into abstract shapes. Ocean waves polish some of the chunks to a crystal clear finish, while others turn into blue gems. The tides tow them back to the black volcanic sand shoreline, called Breiðamerkursandur—Black Sand Beach. The contrast of the crystal-clear ice chunks resting on the black sand beach gives the beach its more recent name—Diamond Beach. Most striking, however, are the blue ice chunks against the black sand. 

As I strolled the black sand beach that mid-September day, I made this photo. The tides and winds were rather brisk, so there was a great deal of action as the waves slammed against the stranded ice chunks. I wanted to capture the halo-like spiral patterns of the spray. I made this image with my iPhone 8 (having left my Canon back in the SUV). I made several images, as I waited patiently between the ebb and flow of the tide and the waves smashing against the ice chunks.

The overall experience of Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon is breathtaking. Lonely Planet describes the Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon as "a ghostly procession of luminous blue icebergs." Words like “other-worldly” and “surreal” come to mind, but don’t do it justice. Instead, say azure. Say cerulean. Say turquoise. Say maya. Say cornflower. Say ice blue. 

Timothy Geiger

Timothy Geiger on “Maybe Mice”

“Maybe Mice” was written during a one-week residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts outside Knoxville, Tennessee. It was an incredibly productive week that allowed me to draft nine new poems; and for the opportunity, I remain incredibly grateful. I stayed in a tiny cabin called “The Writer’s Coop” about a quarter-mile back in the woods, with no electricity or running water, and heated only by an old cast iron wood-stove.

Under a canopy of oak trees, on a moss-covered deck looking out over a small “holler,” I sat bundled in a blanket and wrote as the first cold-spell of November began to settle over the countryside. I remember being dumb-struck by the sounds of all the birds that called that small valley their home. I could hear them, but rarely did I see them, as they spent most of their time in the branches above. Isolated away from civilization as the cabin was, every sound was clear and echoed off the hillsides. I could hear warblers, and chickadees, and occasionally the screech of a red-tailed hawk, and sometimes if I looked at just the right moment, I caught the sight of anonymous tail-feathers through the branches. Somewhere at one end of the holler, a small spring bubbled up, and when the wind was right I could hear it as well. I spent one afternoon looking for the source of that spring, and though I could hear it, I never could find exactly where it began.

Likewise, that quality of what was hidden translated to inside the cabin as well, where every night I fell asleep to the patter of something (maybe mice) crossing wall to wall above the oak paneled ceiling. I liked that I could imagine what those harmless critters looked like, but liked better still that I could picture them building an entire city concealed out of sight, a city built entirely in my imagination. Like the birds, and like the origin of the fresh-water spring, I never once saw them. In the quiet of that forest setting I spent so much time just listening, and through the act and effect of listening I felt my imagination triggered anew.

Most of the poems I wrote that week are about things I never witnessed, but those poems became a testament to the power of listening closely. Whether hidden by oak leaves, or among the timothy grasses covering the valley floor, or overhead behind a wood paneled ceiling, I realized just how little it takes to make a whole world out of the dark.

Patricia Behrens

Patricia Behrens on “New York City Field Notes: Spring 2020”

At 18 years old I left the small town in coastal Massachusetts where I grew up and came to New York City to go to college. I fell in love with the city and never left.  

In the spring of 2020, New York City became the epicenter of the new Covid-19 virus. Many residents fled.  Those who stayed sheltered in place in a locked-down city with lives suddenly frozen in place.

Illness and death affected our friends and neighbors and entered the apartment buildings where we lived. People lost jobs. We worried about how bad things might get. Ambulance sirens were constant. Their howling was like wind that died down occasionally but never entirely went away.  I could forecast the next day’s death numbers by how the sirens sounded outside my windows.

During this time the city was also eerily beautiful.  

Except for the sirens, the city was quiet, stripped of its usual constant noise. Central Park West outside my door was free of traffic, as if it had been cleared for a parade. The air was fresh—light and clean. 

People talked about the sound of birds in the parks, which, suddenly, we heard. We wondered: had the birds always been there?  Had their sound simply emerged as the usual city noises receded? Or were they part of a new influx of wildlife drawn by our now more natural city?  We speculated about it; no one seemed to know.  

Deprived of my usual exercise at gyms and pools, I walked the city.  Tourist sights that I had never imagined seeing without people—Times Square, Bethesda Fountain—stood almost empty.  And I thought, someday, when we look back on this time, we will not only remember the anxiety and grief, we will also celebrate these moments of beauty. 

But we weren’t able to talk about them at the time—at least I wasn’t—because it felt wrong to celebrate anything, except for the clapping at 7. Then the whole city would briefly come together at open windows to clap and bang pots and pans and ring bells in shared recognition of healthcare workers and other essential workers.  The 7 o’clock ritual gave structure to our days.

The poem “New York City Field Notes: Spring 2020” was written during this time about this time, in an early effort to grapple with its contradictions.  

The poem doesn’t try to come to terms with them—for me, and for many others, I suspect, this will need to come later or perhaps not at all. It is just meant to be, as the title says, among the field notes. 

And it also should be said that the cherry trees that appear in the poem are themselves hardy city survivors.  Some say that they include one or two gnarly centenarians that date back to Japan’s 1912 gift of Yoshino cherry trees to the United States.

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