{"id":36221,"date":"2017-01-15T07:41:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-15T13:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36221"},"modified":"2023-12-04T18:30:32","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T00:30:32","slug":"the-poetic-finesse-of-katharine-coles-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-poetic-finesse-of-katharine-coles-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poetic Finesse of Katharine Coles’ Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"flight<\/a><\/em>Katharine Coles\u2019 writing style is pared-down and precise. The former Utah Poet Laureate (2006-2012) often uses punctuation in order to minimize verbiage, and favors \u201cerasures\u201d to create new poems by eliminating words from an existing text. The effect can seem a bit chilly, though it set the perfect tone for her marvelous\u00a0The Earth is Not Flat<\/em>\u00a0(Red Hen Press, 2013 ) (reviewed in 15 Bytes\u00a0here<\/a>), which was written during a journey to Antarctica. In\u00a0Flight<\/em>, her sixth collection, the poet is visiting sunnier climates, touring Italy and Turkey, and the opening poem, \u201cHotel Mercure,\u201d finds her lodging in an oddly circular hotel,<\/p>\n

\u2026 Every hall
\nCurving out of sight, into
\nGeometry\u2019s continuous now.<\/p>\n

Soon we are tagging along on a tour of historic art and architecture, visiting museums, photographing Hagia Sofia, admiring the floors at the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, evading the tour guide at Pompeii and, in the poem \u201cMetaphysical,\u201d pondering the homey details in the frescoes at Herculaneum:<\/p>\n

\u2026 What
\nThey found beautiful, I find beautiful.
\nA wet nose. A singing frog. A glass
\nRound enough to let the grape breathe.<\/p>\n

The \u201cGlass House\u201d that provides a title for the first half of the book is a greenhouse full of exotic plants, a \u201cmuseum of the impossible\u201d where the poet observes her companion slipping through the branches and wonders, \u201cShould I turn around? Should I follow?\u201d<\/p>\n

The poems are compelling, but at first reading it seemed to me that there was something missing. Surely there was more to motivate this poetic flight than a summer vacation . . . A note in the acknowledgements indicates that, \u201cmost of the poems in this manuscript arose directly or indirectly from a project, \u2018Natural Curiosities,\u2019 in my ongoing collaboration with visual artist Maureen O\u2019Hara Ure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Coles\u2019 poems and Ure\u2019s artwork are both strong enough to stand alone, they resonate even more strongly together. For the curious, some of Coles\u2019 poetry was shown with Ure\u2019s artwork at an exhibit,\u00a0Here Be Monsters<\/em>\u00a0(Reviewed in\u00a015 Bytes, October 2012\u00a0<\/a>); likewise, the poem \u201cSwoon\u201d previously appeared in a collaborative artists\u2019 book,\u00a0Swoon: From the Italy Sketchbooks\u00a0<\/a><\/em>(Hand in Glove Press, 2002), with Ure\u2019s drawings illustrating the fanciful imagery,<\/p>\n

Time won\u2019t end
\nnor what we can picture:<\/p>\n

A sky assembled, a pelican
\nGone to sea, a dog turned demon pitched across
\nLimits we imagine.
\nAnything
\nWinged may fly\u2014a lion, the dead.<\/p>\n

It would have been nice to have a few notes to help match Coles\u2019 poetry with Ure\u2019s artwork, though perhaps to have them separately is a kind of intentional erasure. Ure\u2019s website says that the two artists are collaborating on a bestiary of image and text in response to the Byzantine mosaics of Venice, Ravenna, and Istanbul, and I hope this project is still in the works.<\/p>\n

The second half of\u00a0Flight<\/em>\u00a0is titled \u201cFound Objects,\u201d named after a poem labled, \u201cin the mood of Atget,\u201d a 19th<\/sup>-century French photographer famous for taking extraordinary pictures of the everyday Paris where he lived. Coles\u2019 tribute to Atget is a curiosity cabinet in rhyme:<\/p>\n

A skeleton, modeled
\nHalf-life size. A bust.
\nA mounted beetle.
\nCultivated dust.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the exotica contained in the glass house museums, these found objects tend to be domestic and close at hand\u2013a vase of flowers, a hike in the mountains, a house finch, a haircut \u2014 though in \u201cThe Body is no Scientist\u201d the poet still revels in intensity over indulgent domestic coziness.<\/p>\n

My body runs itself to euphoria and beyond, will run until its knees fray and buckle and its muscles feed on themselves.<\/p>\n

And yet, when she\u2019s writing about dogs and their wet noses, Coles becomes sweetly sentimental. \u201cCleo at Fourteen\u201d is a sonnet for an aging running companion,<\/p>\n

Later when I drink my second coffee
\nShe lies on her air conditioning vent.\u00a0Oh, dog.<\/em>
\nIn her sleep, she wags and wags and wags.<\/p>\n

That perfectly expressive and tender \u201cOh, dog<\/em>,\u201d says everything about Coles\u2019 poetic finesse. Two words in italics, and any dog lover is moved to tears.<\/p>\n

Flight\u00a0<\/em>strikes me as an addition to Coles\u2019 previous work, rather than a new direction, but still, it made me want to delve into her previous work to rediscover one of Utah\u2019s best working poets.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Flight
\n<\/em>by Katherine Coles
\nRed Hen Press<\/a>2016
\n86 pp.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katharine Coles\u2019 writing style is pared-down and precise. The former Utah Poet Laureate (2006-2012) often uses punctuation in order to minimize verbiage, and favors \u201cerasures\u201d to create new poems by eliminating words from an existing text. The effect can seem a bit chilly, though it set the perfect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1518,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[2589,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-01 12:11:44","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\/36221","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\/1518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36221"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72496,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36221\/revisions\/72496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}