Pebble Creek by Amil Quayle
1994; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wal.1994.0004
ISSN1948-7142
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
Resumo374 Western American Literature Miriam Garcia’spainting, 'Womanin theClouds. Risingoutofan inkyforeground, a small light-roofed house and solitarywindmill catch the glow from a sky that refuses to distinguish between clouds, hills, and the rolling curves ofa reclining female body. In Between Towns, Kutchins takes as her subject the inseparability between land and self, lightand loneliness, space and spiritthat is the subjectof the painting aswell as the legacy of the western landscape. Unlike many young poets, Kutchins is neither self-absorbed nor sex-obsessed . Her quest isfor something more elemental than individualityor fleeting sexual union. In “Still Lifewith Hawks and Storms,”Kutchins tells us she would “like to be one with the impalpable circle ofthe unconscious.”Seeking connec tions between herself and entities as various as rocks, ticks, trees, wind, and coyotes, the poet explores the land that isthe bodyand the body that isthe land, recognizing—and rejoicing in—her own insignificance. Of the hawks, she writes: “Beneath their voracious shadows, I was a random form,/an uncamouflaged lump,/a mere whistle in their chain ofbeing./I was the least of their concerns.” But Kutchins also recognizes her power, which “comes from opening my thighs,/letting the moon migrate through my body, seed my blood.”In receiv ing the moon, she renews the human connection, “giving birth to my mother.” In “Watching Great Grandma Bean Undress,”Kutchins observes “she and her daughter and her daughter/and her daughter who is me/lingering in this one body.”And as she meditates on the similaritybetween her bones and the bones of her father, she asks: “What might I be then, when the glacial slice/ofhis life has long since left me?” Kutchins writes like the girl in the screened gazebo in “Alchemy” paints, “her lips and fingers doused with the dropped seeds of light.”Far from being one of those people who “don’t know their own hands,”she understands that the body’s wisdom is inseparable from that of the mind. As these fine poems demonstrate, Kutchins has taken to heart the message her grandmother whis pers in “Shells”: Trustyourpart. ELIZABETH BLAIR University ofIllinois at Chicago Pebble Creek. ByAmil Quayle. (Lincoln, Nebraska: ASlowTempo Press, 1993. 72 pages, $12.00.) There is in Pebble Creek a pronounced spirit of vitalism, animation, even animism. One isso immersed in Amil Quayle’suniverse that one quicklyforgets that the nature with which (or whom) he is conversing is seen by many as inanimate, an object. He has taken the taboo of personification seriously enough to ignore it. What he has created is a near totemism. Reviews 375 His is aworld where “aspens turn their backsides”out ofembarrassment at being titillated by the wind. Quayle, whose namesake suggests the very life he touts, ponders questions of whether the Snake River “was really the Snake before it had the Name”as he effectively paints a land as moving aswater. His is a paradigm where a covenant with a dying Pinto is given more reverence than money to which (or perhaps whom) Quayle also assigns a near numinous quality. He writes that “A person has to respect/Money to have it. Have never come to give/Money the proper respect it deserves.” Quayle’s universe is one where humus interweaves with humility. As he is reading to his dogJake from Dante’sDivine Comedyhe observes that she likes the language but concedes that “Horse shit must all taste the/Same no matter how expensive the horse.” Indeed it isthe humor ofthe text that savesitfrom sounding like an anemic Emerson or a Lawrence trying to work out issues ofandrogyny. Quayle writes of picking up Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Idealfor a dime and spending too much, of a Caretaker who doesn’t care, or of skiers dressed in “full body condoms.”Indeed the selfparody that saturates the text saturates the landscape Quayle seems to sense as a Self. As he closes the text the narrator is shown humming the Hank Williams tune “there’ll be no teardrops tonight.” It is a bittersweet proclamation as paradoxical as the sense of community Quayle finds in nature. BILL FINLAW University ofNebraska Carpal Bones. By Margaret Aho. (Boise: Limberlost Press, 1993. 36 pages, $15.00...
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