Learning the Language by Kate Greenstreet, Etherdome

Reviewed by Maureen Thorson

Been meaning to write a little bit about Kate Greenstreet’s chapbook, Learning the Language for a while now, but work-related insanity has interfered. Sorry if what follows seems too “reviewer-y,” but I’m trying to decode my own reaction to these poems beyond “Hey, me likey,” which is my usual articulated depth. Anyway, to break out the vocabulary, these poems take on the essential difficulties of understanding and connection-making, likening everyday speech to fortune-telling: an art in which one taps into a mysterious source that may not always tell you what you want to hear.

They always want to know the same things: love
and money. Or, “Yes,
the world will soon acknowledge . . .”

The poems evoke traveling, bridges, drawing, detective novels, gestation – all translations over distance, obstacles, vision, knowledge, or being. But speech, like any relation across spaces, is difficult, and oblique.

For a long time,
I didn’t know what to say.
And of course I didn’t want to say it.

Things remain uncertain despite the fact that language is our attempt to render everything clear. Time itself interferes . . . our memories, which are supposed to allow us uninterrupted access to a narrative, are themselves faulty.

All positions being apparent,
no one agrees about
what happened next.

But the poems themselves attain clarity through an accretion of nuanced emotions, connections misplaced and replaced in a field, constantly. And this give and take between what is said and what is heard, what is done and what is understood, becomes instead of forbidding blankness, an opportunity for reinventions, for multiple “ways of saying,” and many types of progress toward communication.

The urge to travel, the longing for home,
it comes to us
as weather

. . . .

What is in us already.

Because we love the ground,
The uncrossed distance.

Interested? Good. You can find Learning the Language here, and don’t forget to watch out for her upcoming full-length collection from Ahsahta!Been meaning to write a little bit about Kate Greenstreet’s chapbook, Learning the Language for a while now, but work-related insanity has interfered. Sorry if what follows seems too “reviewer-y,” but I’m trying to decode my own reaction to these poems beyond “Hey, me likey,” which is my usual articulated depth. Anyway, to break out the vocabulary, these poems take on the essential difficulties of understanding and connection-making, likening everyday speech to fortune-telling: an art in which one taps into a mysterious source that may not always tell you what you want to hear.

They always want to know the same things: love
and money. Or, “Yes,
the world will soon acknowledge . . .”

The poems evoke traveling, bridges, drawing, detective novels, gestation – all translations over distance, obstacles, vision, knowledge, or being. But speech, like any relation across spaces, is difficult, and oblique.

For a long time,
I didn’t know what to say.
And of course I didn’t want to say it.

Things remain uncertain despite the fact that language is our attempt to render everything clear. Time itself interferes . . . our memories, which are supposed to allow us uninterrupted access to a narrative, are themselves faulty.

All positions being apparent,
no one agrees about
what happened next.

But the poems themselves attain clarity through an accretion of nuanced emotions, connections misplaced and replaced in a field, constantly. And this give and take between what is said and what is heard, what is done and what is understood, becomes instead of forbidding blankness, an opportunity for reinventions, for multiple “ways of saying,” and many types of progress toward communication.

The urge to travel, the longing for home,
it comes to us
as weather

. . . .

What is in us already.

Because we love the ground,
The uncrossed distance.

Interested? Good. You can find Learning the Language here, and don’t forget to watch out for her upcoming full-length collection from Ahsahta!