~MARIANNE POLOSKEY~
MARGOT SCHILPP:
THE WORLD'S LAST NIGHT
Throughout this book, the
author thrills
us with unexpected phrases
as startling as a sharp thunderbolt in the middle of a sunny afternoon.
Margot Schilpp's first book, The
World's Last Night, is divided into three parts. In the first,
the
poet questions many things with the curiosity of a child who uses
imagination
to provide the answers. She seems to be in a hurry, going from sky to
bird
to food to love, eager to cover everything.
It has often been said that there is nothing
new under the sun, but Margot Schilpp takes that hurdle with ease by
dressing
her thoughts in fresh language, thus finding ways to present her
surroundings
in an original way. With the first poem, "Red-Winged Blackbird," she
instantly
pulls us into her thought patterns and her way of viewing the world:
The
barbed wire
bends across the field
like a hair
out of place, though not exactly.
The platinum
sky is bleak and it weeps: gray
all day isn't
the only way of grieving.
Longing is a
knife that blunts itself
on
the dull muscle
of the heart. . . .
Who
pointed out
the beautiful markings of birds?
Summer's curtain
draws across, red-winged
blackbirds weave
into the fence, drag
a crimson thread
across the eye.
Probing whatever she sees or feels,
Schilpp
presents interesting ideas: "A bomb is just a miracle turned backwards,
/ a map only a suggestion — box of lines." From the outset, the author
puts us into a sort of suspense, conditioning us to read on lest we
miss
something essential. In "Proper Subjects" she tells us, "There is
sassafras
tea steeping / on the porch, a wide-planked affair clamping / three
sides
of the house that absorbs / the whole family's secrets." Aware of the
curiosity
she has just aroused in us, she goes on to explain why she chose not to
disclose any of those secrets. "The world / doesn't want to know
anyway,
everyone / hustles to set up the folding chairs."
Throughout this book, the author thrills us
with unexpected phrases as startling as a sharp thunderbolt in the
middle
of a sunny afternoon. In "Poem With Hidden Meanings That, as a Child,
You
Always Feared" she interrupts an idyllic setting with a comment on
nature's
cruelty: ". . . the animal / sees you stuffing your kids' throats /
with hot
dogs; the animal takes / a finger from your child's hand." She uses a
similar
approach in "Manifesto," a poem which was included in the recent
anthology American
Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement (University of Iowa
Press):
To
love something
you must have
considered what it means
to do without.
You must have thought
about
it—the
coefficient of the body
is another
body—but
do not forget
that there are
people who are willing
to
staple your
palm to your chest.
For a while at least, the poet
seems fascinated
by fire, which is mentioned in a number of poems at the beginning of
the
book: ". . . beauty, another hard-to-capture fuel / that burns when you
bring
it close to fire." ["On the Nature of Amber"] "Why not cast the
doused
rag, the straw, / the old lump of your heart / into the flames and see
what catches fire?" ["Auto-Pilot"] "Maybe it's not too late / to
reconstruct the burning." ["Proper Subjects"] "Somewhere a
pianist
warms her hands / by a fire, holds the morning,. . . You can turn me
into
ash — / hold me until I become transparent." ["Poem With Hidden
Meanings"]
Fire is also mentioned in "When Brains
Consider
the Future," where the author compares herself with pigeons that have
settled
in on windowsills of the bomb-proof building where she lives, as if
they
required something strong and indestructible to support their nests.
"There's
no way / to rid ourselves of them / and it's been tried —
pesticides,
/ noise, fire — they resettle / themselves calmly back on the
nest,
/ and I am counting their eggs." Schilpp acknowledges that she,
too,
needs something to rely on: ". . . and in a way, / I, too, refuse to
leave,
am walking / toward it in nothing but / my belted raincoat to meet my
future
/ husband."
Calling her awareness "Obsessional," the
author
describes herself as "obsessed with corn, and the husks / of corn, with
the yellow of bees / and pineapples and lemons." When on a train,
she is "obsessed / with the train, with strange murmurings / and steel
that bends around sound." She concludes, "I have become /
obsessed
with drama: I walk among / the dynamite and hydrangea, and live."
The poems in the second section seem calmer,
more reflective. One has the sense that the poet has gained
insights
from past experiences, and drawn certain conclusions about various
aspects
of her life, and life in general.
We meet Margot at age six, accompanied by
her family, in the poem "One Sunday Each Spring." Dressed up in
pink
gingham and patent leather shoes, she has brought along an empty Easter
basket to be filled with daffodils that are growing in an untilled
field
she describes as "a
yellow cathedral." But as always, this yearly adventure leaves
her
with mixed emotions. Although she squeals with delight at the
eerie
squeak as her hand slides down the stems, she is disappointed that
these
glorious blooms have no fragrance.
At age 14, she abandons her piano lessons
in favor of riding a horse, in the ring and on the trails, one of them
leading to a pig farm that in summer "smelled almost evil." In
later
years, after someone close to her has died, she turns for solace to a
river,
or the idea of a river which "cleans the landscape and the soul."
The soothing sound of water flowing past frees the imagination as
well.
"There are possibilities / you've never considered: winter / is a heat
so cold it warms you. / Love is a method to learn pain."
In "A Nap Sounded Good," we find her relaxing
on the sofa, dreaming of generations of peoples in exotic places, like
Egypt and Japan, who worked harder than she would have been willing or
able to work, at skills with which she is not familiar. But she
doesn't
see herself doing any of that: "It's more my vision that I helped
invent
/ something; Linear B, a method / for weaving palm frond mats, /
impressed
brick, Greek coins, delicate ink, / a way to harness fire, the
wheel."
Toward the end of the book, the poet has
adjusted
her expectations. What some of us may take as negatives, she
simply
accepts. "One trouble / with always is now, how / a body turns
from
itself," she muses in "A Very Short History of Everything." And
as
if to answer someone who is complaining about life, she adds, "Go back
/ to what came before, the corset, / the arrow, rancid meat hanging /
in
a square. Is this / where you want to live and die?"
Despite her realistic outlook, the author
is not immune to lamenting progress and the passage of time. But
she yields to what she cannot change. "Things are already / the shapes
they want to be," she observes in the poem "On the Natures of Matter
and
Time," and continues,
Once
something
breaks apart,
it's a new thing, forever
and ever, until
it breaks apart again
into something
else. It's no use dividing
the world into
broken and unbroken, whole
and part,
healthy
and sick. It's no use
crying: your
tears become drops. Just water.
Like most of us, Schilpp has come
to realize
that basically we are pawns unable to circumvent our fate, regardless
of
our plans, goals and wishes. And she is not reluctant to acknowledge
this:
One
by one we
are called
and we go, but
I can see,
even
with the
image of hypnotic light
that paralyzes
me when my eyes close:
another day
is gone.
It
is; It isn't.
One of these
is true.
I thirst, there
is no water.
Mind
the oases
of desire that fling
themselves at
your throat, butterflies
committing
suicide
against your throat.
. . . How much
can it hurt
to swallow
loss? I
looked and was burned,
a heliotrope
turning to track
the sun across
my mind,
wanting it
to heat me so
that I didn't
burn from the
inside out.
["Poem from Across the Country"]
The World's Last Night
is a
journey that takes us out of ourselves and then brings us safely
back.
Margot Schilpp writes with authority in a clear, steady voice. She
knows
what she wants to say, and she finds new and interesting ways to say
it,
engaging the reader's full attention. I look forward to her next
book, and I wish her continued success.
Schilpp, Margot. The World's Last Night.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:
Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0-8874834-8-8
$12.95
© by Marianne
Poloskey
