WordsRunTogether

Mezzanine is a quietly powerful collection of important poems about the American West. These stories and questions are written in a woman’s voice, with whispered insights that sometimes tickle the ear like the buzzing of a bee’s fragile wings. Susan Kay Anderson portrays a land still rife with mystery and possibility, despite tragedies and losses. If you are at all familiar with the American West or have wanted to know more about it, climb up to the mezzanine, where the view extends beyond the landscape into the past.

In this collection, everything gleams with the poet’s imagination, like the Baerenschliffe (bear shimmer) she imagines coating the floors she mops in the opening poem “Fire Cipher.” In the title poem, the poet inhabits the space between floors of a university building, between day and night, between the real and the imagined, between the detritus of the work day and the silent majesty of public art. Dreams and memories drift through this space and the reader realizes that this is what we do throughout life, telescoping out of the past to zoom in on the all-too-present. By the end of the title poem, we can agree with the poet that “In the aftermath of nothing, I’ve found a little something.”

The poet’s inner life is rich with voices, memories, insights—from childhood to the present, voices of the dead and missing speak to her. The question that asserts itself throughout the book appears:

“Was it two minutes ago        or was it ten years?

Was it half a century ago
or was it last year?”

Bittersweet observations draw us in, as the poet touches on our deepest hidden vulnerabilities: “The leaves look back to their trees wanting more chances.” Who hasn’t felt that? And that desire for redemption comes with a promise we desperately hope is not futile: “…if you/ planted me here/ …/ I’d bear fantastic fruit.”

Some poems start without titles, and some end with a resonant note that hangs in the air. Woven through each are arresting visuals like this one of the moon: “She is astonished. Her bombed face a perpetual O.”

The book’s final poem, “Man’s West Once,” has its own mezzanine built of other authors’ voices. It, too, is “a place to look up, out, and back.” From that space suspended between the poet’s own words, we can see the bottom and top floors, stages for scenes and characters from the poet’s earlier lives in town and villages across the Great West. The book’s real triumph, however, is not its reflective cataloging and assessment of a life spent searching for what was “man’s west once.” It is that a book has been written about the American West from a woman’s perspective, and this one is alive with indigenous voices and native wisdom. That instead of the violent pillaging of a gold rush or a cowboys-and-Indians Hollywood shootout, the landscapes are lovingly preserved, so even delicate butterflies and bees have their say. And the trees and lakeshores, forests and rivers are populated with bears, owls, and wolves. The dangers and mysteries come from these original inhabitants of the west who, under the poet’s watchful eye, get their long overdue homage.

 

 

Like millions of people around the world, I am grieving the fire damage to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris this week. Even as a partial loss (grâce à Dieu!) it’s a sobering one. One that sinks to the pit of my heart…I felt it as I watched Parisians singing hymns outside the cathedral as she burned. I ache for the French and what they are feeling right now. And I’m reminded of times my European friends and family reached out to me when America suffered losses.

I lived in France as an exchange student in 1984-85. I remember the day I visited the cathedral, shortly after arriving in Paris, the awe I felt when I first saw it from afar. The enormity of its size but also of the amount of art that grace it…it just boggles the mind. It’s a museum like few others in the world. I climbed one of the towers, taking countless photos from the little windows in the winding, narrow stone stairwell. Gargoyles and an overcast sky, slate rooftops below, the French flag in the distance. I also took photos of the stained-glass windows; I was disappointed that the rose window wouldn’t completely fit in the frame of my camera. Seeing that window in person had been a goal of mine since my mother had given me a foiled jigsaw puzzle of it when I was twelve. Even the puzzle couldn’t contain the complete window. Seeing the whole marvel in person, I felt a sweet twinge of accomplishment, as if I had fit in a final piece of the puzzle of me.

When America suffered the terrible loss of the Challenger, shortly after I returned home, I remember my boyfriend in France (whom I’d left behind, waving a white hankie as my plane pulled away from the jetway) sent me a very warm and consoling letter. I remember being so moved by that gesture. He recognized it was a national loss but also, in some way, a personal one for each of us. It was like losing a piece of our identity as a brave, proud, and generous nation willing to invest in global curiosity, risk our treasure and people, and share our discoveries with all humankind. The Challenger crew had our imaginations and aspirations on board with them; some of us still feel that phantom pain.

I was again blessed with consolation and sympathy on September 12, 2001. Friends from Germany and Italy left condolences on our answering machine. I was touched that they would do so. They understood the wound our collection consciousness had suffered, a sympathy no doubt born of the personal losses they endured in wars started when they were children.

All this is to say that when the horrible happens, watch for good people to reach out, offer solace. Our world seems torn in many painful directions these days, anger ripping like a Martian wind across every continent. I hope the compassion and largesse that responds to this collective grief moves you. We spend so much of our lives avoiding sadness, but when we allow ourselves to feel it, sometimes we find each other, stripped of the things we think separate us. I could spend some time in that space if it makes us a little more tender, a little more hopeful.

Over fall break my family snuck away to San Francisco for a three-day weekend. It was a fun time, equal parts relaxing and adventuring. And it was a sober trip that made me think we have turned another corner of “normal” and we ain’t going back.

We spent the entire weekend wearing N95 masks because the Air Quality Index (AQI) was a resounding 350. For comparison, one of the world’s most polluted cities, Delhi, was sitting at 240 that weekend. In essence, San Francisco was like modern-day Beijing, only with clam chowder. Of course, a few days of respiratory intrigue is nothing compared to the suffering of the poor souls who lost their forest, their homes, their entire TOWN…and even their lives. My heart breaks for them, not only for the terror and panic they endured, but the trauma they will never quite recover from. The panicked fleeing through firestorms, cars melting roadside, pets and lives left behind…too much.

Yet, not far from all this tragedy, life went on. Most the people wearing masks were probably not native to San Fran. Or just couldn’t get their hands on the masks that ran out as soon as they arrived in stores. We just happen to time it right, which was nice since we walked all day, everywhere, uphill and down. We walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, though you could barely see to one end from the other. This happens often, but it’s normally fog that obscures the bay.

Other than that, SF wows with its distinctive neighborhoods, super steep streets and a lifestyle that defies gravity, and thousands of small businesses. I’ve never seen so many tiny grocery stores in one city. That was nice. Lots of small restaurants, too. But also filthy, filthy sidewalks and a persistent coating of exhausted grime everywhere. Check out the pix below:

We enjoyed the sights on Pier 39.

 

We made it to Sausalito after crossing the bridge. Charming town (expensive).

 

Back in SF, we walked up Lombard Street. Not easy with masks on. That hill is STEEP (and I write this from 8500 feet, y’all.)

From the top:

I found an odd series of photos in our hotel that made me think about the commodification of the female form.

While just walking down the street to somewhere interesting, I found a wig store, which happens to me in Every. Single. City. (Why??)

And photos of wigs:

So that’s a thing. I have a lot more to say about wigs. Soon.

Overall, the charm of the city won, even though I now have a creepy, persistent cough (I’m sure it’s just cancer seeds rattling around in there). I will try my best to shake off my hypochondria and continue processing all that SF stirred up in me. All signs point that this catastrophic trend is not going away, and I’m just wondering how we’re going to deal with the new normal. Thoughts?