A Review of Heather Akerberg's Dwelling

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Dwelling
Heather Akerberg
Burning Deck Press (2008)
61 pages
$14.00 (available through S.P.D.)
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      Dwelling is the first book of poetry from Nebraska poet Heather C. Akerberg, and as first books go it's a fairly strong collection that rewards careful readers who desire intricate, thoughtful poetry. Maybe for intricate I should really substitute arabesque, as the works tend to build elaborate figurations of thought, sonic mandalas that hold on the air, dwellings (indeed) if we are to admit that poems can be habitations as surely as nests.

      I write nests because as you can probably guess from the cover (see above) birds and their ways of existing and niching in the natural world are a recurrent motif. The main heft of the collection is apparently autobiographical, but think of the way a poet like Lorine Niedecker uses autobiography, rather than any straightforward narrative technique. Akerberg made me think of Niedecker more than once in this collection, with her handling of the natural world in an often meticulous fashion which extends even to the point of onomatopoetically producing bird's cries in English:

"cold against toepad brings a warm sensation. each bump of plaster
a syllabic message turned on its side. transliterates a story only
this body recognizes. that the leg's reach determines each line's
length--once caressed turns to sound. which couples with
context to make sense of. a correlation between orchards and the
cedar waxwing's sreee. how the habitat fits its body, how the
body loses its sense if extracted. its bearings found when the foot
reaches out from beneath cover.

            wall bares the weight of home.

      Her poetry often reminds me of two of my favorite poets who use phenomenological methodology to produce nonpareil poetry. I'm speaking here of Rosmarie Waldrop herself (who edits Burning Deck press with fellow writer and husband Keith) and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. While Akerberg writer hasn't yet produced a work to rival The Heat Bird or The Reproduction of Profiles, she seems well on her way with the sort of careful readings of the natural world she is doing here. You have to admire the careful subterfuge of "bares" substituting for "bears" in the above passage, how she depicts the slipshod way a body feels its way into a world, and thereby engages in (deceptive) mutual definition. The moment between worlds is every moment, if carefully sensed. Of course, we are trained to shut this off. Our animal auto-pilot says "no." Survival is unforgiving.

      Akerberg's book is a quartet, and the four segments begin with open field poems, words sparely laid out on the page like blackbirds in snow. She alternates the prose poem form with these plique-a-jour poems, which are often the weaker poems, to my taste. I know she is using these as palate refreshers so to speak, to break up the monotony of the prose poem form, and trying to create a greater sense of negative capability with them. But it's the prose poems that have all the memorable lines in the collection for this reader.

      Perhaps we can read this autobiographical work in poetry as a phenomenological study of autobiography itself, as she often seems intent on defining the animal. Here is a memorable and beautiful passage:

anxiously the skyline whose lights mimic those once seen from
the window of a cornflower-blue room where now the season
expresses the basis for her returning for which she feels her
mood colored by the ceiling at which she is staring while con-
sidering the possibility that home by definition is haunted.

      Overall, one senses the book is primarily a phenomenological reading (and an extended linguistic analysis) of that one word, dwelling, and what it means in the natural and intellectual/emotive spheres respectively...the poet wants to draw Venn diagrams to understand where the overlaps occur. This is productive of a deeper understanding often. People and birds intersect in the more fantastical, chimerical sections of this long poem (for the book is surely one poem). Witness this moving section in which she seems to assert (convincingly) that memory itself is a chimera:

            subject as composite he
thought her. legible text. some rhyme scheme to lend it recognition.
could easily construct her past. guess which event came first.
her, knee deep in snow, coming home from school, following her
sister's footsteps, whose plumage of chestnut-red or pale blue
eggs shall be labeled birdsong, a childhood metaphor for the
reflection of light off bedspread and curtain softly through glass
pane from. there can be seen the barren branches of winter grey.

I don't want to oversimplify this poet's modus operandi, or I should say modi operandi, for she has many. Her poetry is the sort that stays with one, or it does with this reader. I often find certain lines of hers returning to me, or returning altered, so altering my perceptions again, which is one of the great emoluments of reading well-written poetry. It reconfigures the world, or rather renders the singular world untenable and stinting.

This is the briefest of reviews for a book which deserves much closer attention, and I can honestly say I have not begun to examine the multiplicity of themes and ideas the poet spins off in this well-crafted debut. I highly recommend Akerberg's chameleonic text for those seeking to change the coloration of their mind on a regular basis. I look very much forward to watching this poet's evolution, as I've no doubt it will be a profitable one, both personally and for the larger personally of poetry.