Dark Verse
When poetry speaks to the abyss
Poetry entwines its way through all our Dark Mountain books and some of it can be discovered in the online Dark Verse archive. Of all writing genres it is poetry that perhaps takes us most directly to the heart of our existential predicament. Across 26 collections, poems intersect and connect their stories and artwork like ivy: poems that bear witness to our ecological and moral collapse, from the mytho-poetic to the lament, giving voice to vanishing creatures, forests and rivers, some loud and some quiet, that speak from the corners of small houses, from deep time, across aeons and oceans.
The editorial to our Uncivilised Poetics issue states this is not just a question of form or language: ‘Poetry can be found in the silence, in the spontaneous images and realisations that emerge from a creative contemplation of the world; poetry as awareness or revelation … [that} urges us, in a time of converging crises, to reimagine ourselves and the world in which we live.’
Today we present three searing poems on facing the consequences of those crises: from a planet burning with oil to melting glaciers to a ruthless fracking industry; Mike Cipra (from Issue 15 on ‘the age of fire’, and Clare Wahmanholm and Craig Czury (from Issue 20: ABYSS on extractivism. We start though with the poem that opened our first book: ‘I Went Looking for the Wild One’ by Rob Lewis. With lead image of a billboard poem by Robert Montgomery.
I Went Looking for the Wild One
I went looking for the wild one, the howler, the vatic tramp.
The one for whom the wounded hills are body burns, whose
blood is stained with the old love-wine of poet and earth,
warrior poet, slinging battle flak out at the static
shattering polite conversations everywhere.
I looked in the anthologies, listening for echoes,
traced for signs in the quarterlies, magazines, best of’s.
I learned it’s been a good year for poetry. Grants and awards
keep coming in. Contests and prizes are proliferating,
The wise grey consensus counsels a return to the classics.
Meanwhile, poor scientist holds extinction
in a palm full of numbers
with nothing but data
to howl with.
– Rob Lewis (Issue 1)
Letter From the Suburbs of Death Valley
Dear Mom, the speed bump coming into my trailer park is huge, like a holy asphalt mountain, so when you come to visit, you must slow your tiny car to the speed of the desert tortoises who wander the washes west of this ruined meridian. The children who jump the speed bump on bicycles have strength in their legs and dirt in their hair – they are so beautiful on a Saturday afternoon, shining when I return from the liquor store with a 12-pack in the trunk and a list of adjectives in the mind, soaring, glorious, lost, amazing, inspired by the pair of hawks that fly in circles over the trailer park’s septic pond, but in fact applicable to any life form thriving here. It is a strange existence, punctuated by late nights of writing and frightened glances from neighbours in the morning. Nothing here is normal except the proselytisers who come door-to-door on a regular schedule to save souls, regardless of whether the souls are lonely or poor or drunk or beaten by husbands or just plain out of luck, there are many, many churches willing to sign you up. I haven’t fooled around too much with Jesus just yet, but if I do, I’ll have more friends than I can count. While I was preparing this very letter, the insistent tapping of Mormons woke me from the couch, where I was passed out beside empty beer cans and a pen leaking blue ink. Don’t worry, I am not drowned by words or liquor or irony or what other people think, and every day I watch the sun go down on the desert, turning our sky into something violent for a while. I miss you, Mom. Tell Pop I miss him too, and tell him I am working hard on my book. The words come easily some nights and are more difficult other nights, unpredictable as the wind which fans a smouldering trash fire at the county dump – a conflagration of waste that has been burning steadily for three weeks. According to a disc jockey on the country radio station, this here trash fire could last all summer and fall, until the sadness of heartbreak puts it out. The talk radio host on the competing religious frequency predicts fire until the absolute end of the world. Longer even. Every day, I touch the end, I am paid to spill it under my nails and in my hair, as I drain gallons of used motor oil, the fossil blood of the Earth scorched in metal hearts of motorhomes and SUVs. Although I believe in no God that can slow our consumption, I pray to Her; believe me Mother, every word I write is part of my prayer.
– Mike Cipra (Issue 15)
