{"id":20690,"date":"2013-05-01T23:37:57","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T05:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=20690"},"modified":"2020-03-18T10:17:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T16:17:14","slug":"death-in-the-present-katharine-coles-the-earth-is-not-flat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/death-in-the-present-katharine-coles-the-earth-is-not-flat\/","title":{"rendered":"Death in the Present: Katharine Cole’s The Earth Is Not Flat<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Photo_Credit_Kent_Miles__2_\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Death in the Present
\n<\/span>Katharine Coles’\u00a0The Earth Is Not Flat<\/em>
\n<\/span>by Camille Pack<\/span><\/p>\n

Katharine Coles couldn\u2019t trust her senses. On a grant from the National Science Foundation, she boarded a ship to cross the infamous Drake Passage, the world\u2019s roughest crossing, to live in Antarctica. For the celebrated writer, it was a hunt for poetry and instability, a dislocation from ordinary life. But she also found fear, the raw edge of death, and amidst a sea of glacial mirage, Coles penned\u00a0The Earth Is Not Flat.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The book witnesses her confrontation with uncertainty. \u201cThe whole ocean funnels . . . building upon itself,\u201d she writes in \u201cDrake Passage\u201d and \u201cSailing to Antarctica.\u201d \u201cNothing to stop it. . . . stairs falling underfoot or scaling to meet us.\u201d It\u2019s the kind of scene that generates inner battles, the threatening voices of\u00a0what if.<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the ship<\/p>\n

Is tearing itself<\/p>\n

Apart, isn\u2019t it, beam by steel beam; the ship is gnawing its own liver
\nAnd the sea is eating<\/p>\n

It\u2019s heart out . . .<\/p>\n

Vanishing, cry of shearwater and albatross wing knitting
\nYou to sky; you are height<\/p>\n

And depth and open mouth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coles thinks it\u2019s a mistake to separate body from intellect. She engages in what she calls \u201cpassionate thinking,\u201d being present in mind and body to a single moment. So when her poems include flashes of autobiography or past pain or longing, she refers to those lines as peripheral, even intrusions.<\/p>\n

The glancing moments may come across as withholding, but Coles sees the past as insignificant in the face of the present, and generating instability may be a vehicle for approaching deeper interiority \u2014 from the side. \u201cWhat I\u2019m wondering,\u201d she says in a phone call, \u201cis whether physical danger helps me to manage vulnerability or displace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her metaphorical richness will strike readers. In \u201cWalking the Glacier\u201d she describes a raft of ice continually cracking into chasms around her.<\/p>\n

Splitting. If I forget myself, I could
\nBecome spectacular. Could throw<\/p>\n

Myself, whole hearted, into something
\nOr off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Literally, the poem is about distraction, about attention acutely concentrated by threat. Lose focus, end up in a crevasse. \u201cThere would be something pretty spectacular about that,\u201d she laughs, \u201cso there\u2019s that kind of spectacle.\u201d But beyond the obvious, \u201cspectacular is etymologically related to spectacles and speculum, inspection, the whole idea of looking and lenses and perception,\u201d Coles says.<\/p>\n

So while the downside of forgetting yourself may be death, the upside means the fear of judgment drops away; you could become transported, clear-eyed.<\/p>\n

That physical and emotional interchange is repeated in \u201cTo Alice, the Beast Appears.\u201d<\/p>\n

You know
\nIt\u2019s apocryphal. You take one photo<\/p>\n

After another. Carved ice, blue
\nWater you must jump into, though<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll take years to get your nerve,
\nA day to stop chattering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m writing well,\u201d Coles says, \u201cit\u2019s always a really white-knuckled experience; excitement and fear coexist.\u201d As a result, there seems to be a constant suggestion to readers that if we could only muster the courage to forget self and fear, our lives could be \/ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \/ (fill in the blank with your own term).<\/p>\n

The value of passion and questioning is that we turn off auto-pilot: spur unanticipated growth. Coles says it\u2019s \u201cone of the things that\u2019s truly harrowing about being alive, and one of the great pleasures of being alive. That we, like everything else, are in constant flux.\u201d<\/p>\n

But why that level of willful risk? \u201cIt\u2019s the practice of poems to work as hard as you can to come cheek by jowl with what can\u2019t be known or articulated, which is also in a way to come cheek by jowl with your own limitations, your own mortality, the fact that you\u2019re going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

It troubled her family and friends. In \u201cReckless\u201d she mused,<\/p>\n

Maybe you want to feel all the places your heart can make itself known inside your body\u2014a pulse, a flutter, an unexpected empty space. . .<\/p>\n

Maybe your body too is a landscape constructed of displacement and mirage, pain generated one place but felt in another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Coles wants intellectual and emotional edge, seeks the full-bodied, full-minded experience of estrangement. \u201cSometimes even pushing the edge or the boundary, so that in a given moment we might be able to say a little bit more than we were able to say in the moment before. But what we\u2019re still doing is coming right up against the edge of what can be articulated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson did that without leaving home, Coles admits, and even recently she experienced that complete presence with a painting in London. But risk is an inescapable \u201cvehicle for translocation.\u201d It brings its own awe.<\/p>\n

In the extremes of glacial morass, Coles shared perpetual daylight with creatures many of us will only see on screens. They are unfathomable and impenetrable, Coles says, but \u201cI think you can know some things about their sentience simply from the way they interact with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cSelf-Portrait with Elephant Seal\u201d she marvels at a seal on land who calls and calls, ungracefully, to those in the water and writes,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just another clumsy mammal
\nOut of its element. Together<\/p>\n

We share this moment in the sun, which is
\nDoorway, hinge, aperture to what
\nNeither of us will say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always curious about what it is they\u2019re experiencing in the same place and time that I am. I certainly can\u2019t project or articulate that for them. I can barely articulate it for myself,\u201d Coles says, pointing to an edge. But however clouded our perception, she\u2019s clearly interested in the value we generate by naming something: an idea, an animal, an experience.<\/p>\n

Her images are stunning, as in \u201cPenguin and Human.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then one
\nTakes to the water and takes
\nOur breath\u2014flight stitching wave to sky<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her pairings shorten the distance between us and them, as when she describes the Ad\u00e9lie Penguin\u2019s apparent fear of darkness in \u201cNo Wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think how
\nThey feel, swimming<\/p>\n

Just ahead of the night,
\nWhich, someday, even they
\nWill not be able to outrun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This haunting strain pervades the book and brings up the question of disconnection, of our own unreliability and the way we rewrite our experiences in retrospect, even lose what\u2019s in front of us.<\/p>\n

In \u201cSelf-Portrait as Erasure,\u201d Coles compares losing the attention of her lover, \u201cwhen you \/ Sink to where we cannot keep \/ Each other,\u201d to a memory of chasing humpback whales, a memory that corresponds in no way with the videotaped experience.<\/p>\n

I tell you, I can smell
\nThe whale\u2019s sigh even now, its whoosh
\nOf fish and heat. Why hold on to whatever
\nReally happened, when
\nMemory writes over every bit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our natural propensity to change, unintentionally, creates a striking parallel to her land of ghost-images, where the eye cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n

So many \u201cquestions are raised by reflection and refraction and mirage,\u201d Coles says. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you\u2019re looking at. What you\u2019re seeing\u2014you don\u2019t actually know if you\u2019re seeing it. You don\u2019t actually know if it\u2019s present.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is not what you look at, but what you see. \/ The eye is not innocent, it is already committed,\u201d she writes in the book\u2019s one cento.<\/p>\n

Coles returned home on the solstice. In one day, she passed \u201cfrom the shortest to the longest day of the year.\u201d It was unplanned and disorienting going from constant light into Utah\u2019s \u201cdarkland.\u201d<\/p>\n

After one month in a landscape of frozen roiling, everything was different. No planning could predict such immensity, and in \u201cExit Interview\u201d she writes,<\/p>\n

Knowing the difference
\nDidn\u2019t prepare me for the glacier\u2019s face
\n. . .
\nor how the sea
\nRolls over and back and takes
\nUs with it. I didn\u2019t learn to leave
\nMyself behind.
\n. . .
\nI never expected the sunset
\nWould refuse to end long after I did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThere is a sense in which I became available to bliss,\u201d Coles says of how it changed her. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a pretty happy person, but this was something else. To be present to passion, to be present to the body, to be present to what I witnessed\u2014called reality\u2014in that intense way. I think it permanently changed me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may be that being present with death presents you with a choice,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can decide to be present with life, which means also being present with death,\u201d or numb out, live a half-life.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s joy we can\u2019t experience without shadow, she argues in \u201cRumors of Topography.\u201d It\u2019s an intimacy we share with the earth, with \u201ca land that seem[s] to be constantly erasing itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

For your pleasure, that show of light
\nThe moment darkness descends<\/p>\n

And threatens not to lift. For months, also<\/p>\n

For your pleasure, the question: Where
\nDarkness ends and you begin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Glaciers collapse, ice reforms, there is loss on a macro scale across the planet, on a micro scale as we transform.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Earth Is Not Flat\u00a0<\/em>by Katharine Coles was published by Red Hen Press in March 2013. Visit\u00a0redhen.org<\/a>\u00a0to learn more and order a copy.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Death in the Present Katharine Coles’\u00a0The Earth Is Not Flat by Camille Pack Katharine Coles couldn\u2019t trust her senses. On a grant from the National Science Foundation, she boarded a ship to cross the infamous Drake Passage, the world\u2019s roughest crossing, to live in Antarctica. For the celebrated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":848,"featured_media":20732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,35],"tags":[1108,1294],"class_list":["post-20690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literary-arts","tag-by-camille-pack","tag-katharine-coles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Photo_Credit_Kent_Miles__2_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 09:10:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20690"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51888,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20690\/revisions\/51888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}