Broadstone Books
53 pages
ISBN:978-1-956782-48-6
In When Nothing Wild Remains the poet takes the reader on a journey into the land and experiences of his past, which remain present, and which he cannot escape. Like Cavafy who wrote about the city you carry about everywhere no matter how much you try to get rid of its claws, Gerald Wagoner begins his trip in the book’s first lines: ‘You might return on whim, bring your brother not yet born.”
The quiet ambition of this poet and visual artist (the latest in a long line of artists who combine both disciplines, we think of Patchen and Walcott, among others) is to write for the not yet born. And this book is his testament, written after a journey to the Montana and Oregon of his youth– (Cesaire produced the notebook of his return to the native country)–a journey he survives but transformed utterly, facing the dark truth described in the title “when nothing wild remains.”
So what does Wagoner find on his hero’s journey, his return trip? In Swaths of Stars “I bought a fry bread taco that brisk afternoon/certain I came here to end something.” In the ironically titled Rearview Mirror, “In this Oregon scablands town…the snow measures here/the negative spaces in the still night’s disquiet.”
We are given insight into the negative and the troubling details of the poet’s youth. Swaths of Stars continues: “Some poems are traumas in need of triage.” In Where the Columbia River Meets the Grand Coulee Dam “I cannot stop the osprey circling above.”
And for whom will the osprey swoop? This poet, like Cain, has a mark on his emotional forehead and this journey is his attempt to apply a lotion on the scab. In Circa 1953 “ A black widow the boy never sees,/watches from behind the cellar stairs.” And “Big Kids chase the boy down, pin him, smear/soft dog turd on his face, in his hair. It burns.”
The memories burn throughout this microscopic examination of Wagoner’s scenes from childhood, the ones that have haunted him through his adult years and insist on this return journey to uproot any cancerous cells, to heal the body, to move on alive.
The return journey inevitably includes documenting what and who have been lost and what has been changed irrevocably. In The Loss of Twodot he writes “ The Two Dot post office, the Two Dot Foods, the Two Dot Bar….–All closed.” In In-flight “Our plane is now in its final descent…I’m flying from New York/My mother is on life support.”
In Morrow County, the poet states: “We come here to ask what is intact.” He then goes to describe the inevitable effects of aging: “The plump girl/down the block, from the fourth grade,/is still there./Wasting on MS now./The husband’s oxygen tank beside/his chair..”
Wagoner is merciless and relentless in describing what he sees and feels on the journey. I take my hat off to him as reading his poems have got me to think about my own still to be ordered, still fear-driven and reluctant return to the sources of my own wounds.
But this review is not only about the transformation in the reviewer. You will find precise carvings throughout the book by a poet who is also a well-known master sculptor. Enjoy the journey, both its pain and pleasure.
Indran Amirthanayagam c) March 16, 2024
Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of twenty five books of poetry and poetry in translation, including Seer (Hanging Loose Press, 2024), The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com), edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the reading series Poetry at Beltway Editions, He serves on the Board of DC-ALT. His blog is http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com
Gerald Wagoner's childhood was divided between Eastern Oregon and Montana where he was raised under the doctrine of benign neglect. After earning a Creative Writing degree, Gerald pursued a sculptor’s life in Oregon. He moved east to study with the sculptor Richard Stankiewicz. In 1982, after receiving an MFA in Sculpture from SUNY Albany, he moved to Brooklyn NY. Gerald has exhibited in PS 1, The Queens Museum, and the Drawing Center. He was awarded a Studio-in-a-School Artist in Residence 1986-87, and taught Art and English for the NYC Department of Education from 1988 to 2017. 2018: Visiting Poet Residency: Brooklyn Navy Yard. 2019: Installation and poetry event The Tides Of Time, Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse. 202/2022: Created and hosted the outdoor poetry reading series: A Persistence of Cormorants. Publications: Right Hand Pointing, Ocotillo Review, BigCityLit, The Lake, Coffin Bell. J-Journal, Blue Mountain Review, Night Heron Barks, the Maryland Literary Review, October Hill Magazine, Shot Glass, The Umbrella Factory,