Peripheral Vision

Susan Kinsolving

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780802136053
• eBook ISBN: 9781597096164
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Peripheral Vision, Susan Kinsolving’s fourth book of poems, explores the world from many points of view. She takes her readers to England, Hollywood, Wyoming, France, and Chile. She goes behind the scenes in a military hospital, an elementary school, and a disturbed family. Her poems were described in the New Yorker as “grand and almost terrifying.” In this new collection, she proves herself again. As a guest poet and lecturer, Kinsolving has performed at numerous venues, including Harvard, Columbia, and Yale University, as well as Bad Robot in Santa Monica and Bread Loaf in Vermont.

TRUTH BE KNOWN

ON SPINDRIFT DRIVE ONE NIGHT

A thirty-five-foot wave crashed through the house,

smashing windows, pushing a pillar into the ceiling,

and sweeping the desk out to sea where, strewn with kelp,

it floated away to rewrite that nightmare into a dream.

Years have washed over the details of my timely

escape from that rocky precipice on which I lived.

Yet I often yearn to retrieve one book,

an unabridged dictionary, a grand old Webster’s

Second. Sometimes I picture it still in the salt

water, all 2,289 pages rippling and disintegrating,

a plankton of syllables, drifting from pronunciation

and redefining each entry as food for fish.

Perhaps that is how the book will be returned

to me, on a platter of protein, bone, and etymology.

I would eat it with exactitude, separating the skin

and skeleton, one meaning from the meat

of another. I am but a beachcomber, pocketing

sand dollars, broken shells, hoping for a phrase.

I envy the ocean’s endless lexicon, nameless

derivations, fluencies, unfathomable piracies.

MILLIONS

Half her head plays Lotto; the other half plays Emily

in Our Town or Amherst. By the synaptic second, re-

evaluations, generations of money, chicken coops and

attaché cases, markdowns and night shifts, lost, ex-

changed in a day. Even an orchard becomes her rapid

transfer system. Bees humming through stock quotes,

fruit infected with a taste of metal, clouds evaporating.

There’s no accounting for it, the currency of time

on the take. In foreign countries she clutches her purse;

at home she forgets where she left it, behind a sofa

pillow or under a kitchen counter. But today an indigo

bunting takes her breath away while a real estate sign

puts its stake in the heart of the matter. She knows it

all goes someday. Maybe the sooner, the better.

A dry eye doesn’t cry. What luxury to see a rare bird,

flown in flash, blue into blue, air to nowhere. How it goes . . .

AFTER FROST

As the poet said, I weep for what little things could make me glad:

those days perfected under the pines with Pamela, a mansion

in a rickety playhouse, daily dramas among three dolls, a feast

in a basket, and her docile collie nudging with his long wet nose.

When autumn winds blew through her fields, oceans appeared.

Then we stumbled ashore to rediscover old cow skulls,

mossy and gray; their hollow eyes fixed on our eager fascination.

We named that ghostly land “The Bones Estate” and unearthed

its many treasures of rusted lanterns, broken bottles, bricks,

and shards of crockery. Each recovered relic was put to quixotic use.

A nickel established our lifelong wealth and a pair of bent glasses

framed our spectacular future. Now the years have made me sad

and simple. I turn to memory like an old beggar, but time is tight-

fisted, tossing a two-bit reverie onto the pavement of a cold day.

A DISTANCE

Audible but incomprehensible, friends speak from a distance.

She cannot grasp any meaning, even a water glass. Less is present,

more past. Milkweed makes sense of the autumn air, taking future

from here to there, nowhere. A flock of starlings settles its frenzy

in a field of wild asters. Her own hand could be gentler than God’s.

TO HER IN HOLLYWOOD

I will not say goodbye to you, young actress

centered on your celluloid stage. Part of you

wants me to wave a fond farewell, release you

from your parental past, abandon you to film,

fate, and future. But no such luck, my darling

daughter. Put a continent between us and still

I will call, as if to a wrong number, awaiting

cursory forgiveness. Someday, I’ll be at your

door like a weary salesman hoping for a hint

of engagement. The tough truth of our invisible

matter is just this: I will depart from you only

when I am dust. And even then, you may sense

me swirling with your triumphs or settling

sadly over surfaces when you are forlorn.

I simply cannot say goodbye to you, even

when, at wit’s end, I’d almost like to.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Truth Be Known
• Peripherals
• History of A Metaphor
• Prosthetic Anecdotes