Uneasy Reader: Thoughts On Poetry In General And Shana Youngdahl's Donner: A Passing In Particular

I used to read poetry confidently. When I edited my college paper, back at Beloit, we put W.S. Merwin on the front page and ran a long interview with the even more obscure Laurence Lieberman.  But more recently, I read poetry tentatively, and, in my worst moments, defensively. (I have the same reactions to contemporary art.) I curse Jorie Graham. 

Then I remember the very basic rule of reading poetry: work harder. Read it several times; read it slowly; let it percolate through my mind. 

When I do this, the rewards are amazing.  I’ve recently finished Shana Youngdahl’s affecting chapbook Donner: A Passing.  It took me some time to realize that her very syntax absorbs her subject: starvation and how it changes people.   

Before starvation ends life, it distorts consciousness.  Consider this passage, well into the book: 

Back at the lake: cabins buried under, survivors
immune to fumes of shit and vomit

Little movement, this, the felling
of trees. The dead
frozen-eyed storms.

The bible murmured aloud, a forsaken
 mountain where few breathe.

Each day the same bones
boiled and chewed. 

The known world: thinning. 

Look at what’s happened to the verbs.   They are enfeebled into gerunds, exiled to adjectival clauses (“Where few breathe). Notice the way the omitted “are” and “is” petrify the writing:  (are) boiled and chewed, (are) immune to fumes . . .
Notice the horror of “frozen-eyed storms” which denotes snow but evokes the dead settlers.