Oarlock, Oar (Y, W, V, U, F)
by Katrina Vandenberg
by Katrina Vandenberg
still I hail from smokestacks
girders closed
factories McClouth
Steel’s poured slag turning the night
sky and black river
orange the tight typeface of houses
in River Rouge Wyandotte
the steel and auto tribes
tribe of the alphabet job
shops the fathers who set
metal lathes on screw
machines to make in multiples
in sixes packets of ear
plugs the men made deaf shift
changes at three the line
must never stop nothing could
not mothers who taught us
the alphabet shapes
of oxen boats houses
camels letters row on row
to prop us up row the
ideas forward the spear
the snake the needle
tooth Y W V U and F
all hailing from the same
tribe the same hieroglyph father
oar or oarlock depending the alphabet not
unlike
the world we lived in
once we lived in there the letters
trundled forth on their
tracks boxcars shaking full
of gleaming two-doors
leather seats body by Fisher
and yes I hail from
unbeautiful artifice things
that made us late (barred
tracks flashed lights opened
bridges) a tribe of shipbuilders iron ore taconite men
whose hands would not wash clean the machinery
and the machinery of the
river the made thing
more important than we
were the things themselves
not the idea of them I
thought the letters books
a different place the books
were not the way
out but in the letters
embodying mirroring making what is
the oarlock what the oar
still I hail from the Grosse Ile crew
team pulling on the river
before school matching letter
jackets forgotten on the
dock the catch release of blades
From the very first lines of this incredible poem--the title poem--from Katrina Vandenberg's wonderful 2012 book The Alphabet Not Unlike the World, the life of the industrial workforce in mid-century Detroit crashes against the life of the mind, of words, of art. The speaker inhabits the second world--she speaks in a poem, after all--and yet the first words of the poem are "still I hail from" and that "still" starting things off, without capitalization, indicates that the past is in her, even if she is far from Grosse Ile, even if the world she describes no longer exists.
So "still" starts us off. What a risky way to start a poem, just dropping the reader right into the middle of things. The poem's energy pulls the reader along:
"still I hail from smokestacks girders closed/factories McClouth Steel’s poured slag turning the night/sky and black river orange the tight typeface of houses"
From the very first lines of this incredible poem--the title poem--from Katrina Vandenberg's wonderful 2012 book The Alphabet Not Unlike the World, the life of the industrial workforce in mid-century Detroit crashes against the life of the mind, of words, of art. The speaker inhabits the second world--she speaks in a poem, after all--and yet the first words of the poem are "still I hail from" and that "still" starting things off, without capitalization, indicates that the past is in her, even if she is far from Grosse Ile, even if the world she describes no longer exists.
So "still" starts us off. What a risky way to start a poem, just dropping the reader right into the middle of things. The poem's energy pulls the reader along:
"still I hail from smokestacks girders closed/factories McClouth Steel’s poured slag turning the night/sky and black river orange the tight typeface of houses"
Notice here the number of things in these first three lines. Smokestacks. Girders. Closed factories. Slag. The strong and hearty verb "hail." The gorgeous linebreak at "closed/factories." The nouns ground us in world where fathers "set/ metal lathes on screw machines" and "whose hands would not wash clean." Furthermore, the syntax and linebreaks of this poem mimic the relentless push of the assembly line and the brutally hard work of the (mostly) men who worked it.
But this is also a world where "mothers...taught us the alphabet shapes/of oxen boats houses camels letters row on row/to prop us up row the ideas forward". Literacy is the "prop" that will "row" the next generation forward. The work of the mothers is to help their children have access to a different life.
What is so wonderful about this poem, though, is the speaker's refusal to choose a life enabled by education over the place she came from. Instead of seeing education, language, literacy--poetry--as an escape, she suggests that the poems come from the place of her origin. Remember, the poem begins with "still." All these "unbeautiful...things" make poems:
the world we lived in once we lived in there the letters
trundled forth on their tracks boxcars shaking full
of gleaming two-doors leather seats
The boxcars carrying the seats for automobiles are parts of a personal language, and from this language the speaker makes her poems.
This poem, like many in the book, is also an exploration of the origins of the alphabet. When the speaker writes "Y W V U and F/all hailing from the same tribe the same hieroglyph father" we know, in the second use of "hail" that she is writing about the origins of our language and the origins of her own.
The poem ends with an image of the high school crew team on the water, leaving their letter jackets on the dock:
still I hail from the Grosse Ile crew
team pulling on the river before school matching letter
jackets forgotten on the dock the catch release of blades
For more information about The Alphabet Not Unlike the World, please go to http://milkweed.org/shop/product/290/the-alphabet-not-unlike-the-world/
Vandenberg's first book, Atlas, (also wonderful) is available: