from: Earth Gates

There is a tacit bargain between the writer and reader of poetry: each must be willing to feel their way in the dark—trusting that the difficulty, the intellectual restlessness, even the risk of emotional distress will, ultimately, lead to something worth all the effort. After all, poetry does not proceed along the rational and fairly straightforward lines of sentence-building, meaning-making to which we were first introduced in English class. Poets apply pressure to language and imagination to both condense and crystallize. They prize flexibility and unexpected possibilities in order to convey things that had never before been illuminated on the page.  This is true even in the more traditional lyrics of a poet like Mary Buchinger—but more so in her manuscript-in-progress entitled Earth Gates.  Readers who seek out her work believe that being led on these micro-journeys by a vital and vigorous imagination results in inevitable rewards.  (Mary might be too modest to claim those qualities for herself, but I have no hesitation.) Earth Gates is (as she explained to me): “a book-length sequence of untitled pieces that are separated visually with the ampersands that are rather gate-like in appearance and function…The double ampersand ‘gates’ enclose larger sequences, and the single ampersands indicate smaller units within them.  When read aloud, the single ampersands are voiced as and.”  But though the subject matter is vast and eclectic, Mary seems to be engaged in the sort of enterprise central to our human nature: explore Earth’s vast garden, name all you see, savor the gift of being.  Of course, like any individual with an intellectual hunger, she is willing to risk eating from the Tree of Knowledge, despite the consequences. Or, shifting metaphors—and in true Socratic fashion—she seems convinced that ‘an examined life’ will be worth both the living and the eventual dying—which is, of course, the price of admission exacted from every one of us.  The hope seems to be that Mary’s—and our—“minute-ridden” lives will indeed “seep(s) into the garden,” swing open the gates of wisdom, and illuminate our ephemeral days.

The mind we accompany through a variety of natural landscapes (not to mention the thorny terrain of human nature) seems to be trying to simply make connections, deepen awareness, and possibly—as Matt recommends—“to be on the lookout for joy.”  The speaker’s approach is simple: observe, question, and record.  I love how the focus shifts from the seeming solidity of natural objects to the permeability of thought and language. Words devolve into their derivation, echo with associations; sometimes they s p o n t a n e o u s ly inflate and float up into our imagination.  Along with the poet, we must contend with that most dire of questions: why?   No one doubts the marvelous nature of consciousness; but are we (as the poet frames it) bidden or unbidden?  Are we the intentional result of some overarching plan or simply a curious bit of fortune?  Do we possess an inherent purpose beyond our understanding?  And will we be satisfied if we, alone, are left to supply the answer?

Mary is the author of six full-length poetry collections, including the soon-to-be-published There Is Only the Sacred and the Desecrated from Lily Poetry Review Books.   Garnering honors in numerous competitions (the Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry, the Hillary Gravendyk Prize, the May Swenson Poetry Award, The Journal /Wheeler Prize, just to name a few), her poetry earned awards from New England Poetry Club, the Virginia Poetry Society, and over a dozen Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations.  The poet closes this second selection with the proposition: the unbidden guest often proves the most worthy.  But I was left wondering the source of her allusion.  Is it the passage in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings where one character opines: “But oft the unbidden guest proves the best company”?  In that case, even if humankind, with our overdeveloped prefrontal cortex, is simply an accident, a party-crasher at existence’s rave, we may yet be deemed honored guests.  Or perhaps Mary is echoing the Bard of Avon who, in Henry VI, has the line: “Unbidden guests are often welcomest when they are gone.”  If it turns out that our unbridled greed and our capacity for self-destruction so thoroughly degrade the planet that it sees fit to erase us entirely—maybe, in a hundred thousand years, some aliens will land in one of our deserted cities, sample our artwork, peruse our intricate verse, and decide we were worthwhile after all.  After all—it does not have a very nice ring to it.  Of all the gates Mary is swinging open for us, it’s one I hope we don’t pass through.