{"id":38027,"date":"2017-09-03T22:37:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T04:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38027"},"modified":"2018-09-20T22:38:07","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T04:38:07","slug":"simulacrum-of-a-home-lisa-bickmores-ephemerist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/simulacrum-of-a-home-lisa-bickmores-ephemerist\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSimulacrum of a home\u201d: Lisa Bickmore\u2019s Ephemerist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Lisa Bickmore\u2019s new poetry collection begins with a lament for the lost art of penmanship: \u201cI tap the letters out in fluent clicks<\/em>,\u201d she writes, \u201cWhat corsair has made off with my lovely pen?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Frenchified word \u201ccorsair\u201d belongs in a bodice-ripper!\u00a0If only the act of writing were more aesthetic, more romantic than it actually is.<\/strong>\u00a0And really, why not buy a new fountain pen? I get it, though. Writing has an undeserved reputation for being fun, a glamorous form of self-expression, even though it\u2019s actually obsessive-compulsive work that can result in the painful dredging of emotional sediment.<\/p>\n

In one of the most memorable poems, \u201cDust,\u201d the accumulation of emotional debris is represented literally as dirt swept under the rug\u00a0which has been pulled up for a remodeling project revealing \u201cyears of waste, subfloor with a we \/ of money and safety pins, dog hair, \/ cat dander.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>No sooner is the shabby old carpet replaced with pristine bamboo flooring than the depositional process starts all over.<\/p>\n

..because it was new, we buffed it
\nweekly, saw the gradual patterns of our living
\nengrave themselves upon its sheen,
\nhair of dog of cat, of ourselves, small clouds
\nof dust along the walls, and nebulae
\nof dust forming systems of weather
\nunder the bed, and gradually we inured
\nourselves to it<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

And by the end the floor has again become too dusty to invite over any guests except for unwanted mice.<\/p>\n

Despite the mice and the housework, \u201cDust\u201d avoids cute Erma Bombeck-styled self-deprecation and taps into an authentic sense of overwhelmingness familiar to any working woman trying to pull off a second-shift of housework and caretaking. Many of the other poems also react to cultural expectations of female self-erasure. In \u201cAll Saints,\u201d Bickmore writes, \u201cI\u2019ve ground\/\u00a0the coffee wrong again, but I drink it anyway\/ like taking a little earth into my mouth;\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u201cBonnet\u201d\u00a0finds Bickmore struggling against a machine, \u201csewing Easter clothes for my children,\/ the needle sped ahead of my control.\/ I peered at the stitches, the seam ripper in hand;\u201d\u00a0<\/em>and in \u201cOn the Skids,\u201d it has all become too much, \u201cas I find myself crying in the car again\/ I imagine little else but the grief, destiny of everything<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is she doing this to herself?\u00a0Who worries about grinding coffee wrong? Who feels pressured to dress the kids in handmade Easter outfits? It\u2019s no wonder that in \u201cAmulets\u2019\u201d Bickmore imagines making some kind of charm bracelet to ward off pre-determination,<\/p>\n

\u2026I have longed
\nfor a different antiquity in my own origins.
\nBetter these forms and ornaments on loan
\nthan my own etiology of farmers and Mormons.<\/em><\/p>\n

Having rejected one mythology, Bickmore\u2019s frustrated spiritual search becomes another prominent theme. Sometimes the seeker loses her way, as in \u201cShrine\u201d which describes getting lost on the way to Watts Towers in Los Angeles; sometimes she encounters empty space where a spiritual image should be as in \u201cSeven Clouds,\u201d which describes a vacant Japanese shrine where the resident god has been removed for a ceremony; often the search is tied to musical expression, as in \u201cSakura,\u201d when a boyfriend ruins the poet\u2019s earnest performance of a song by playing a jazzed-up version on his guitar, or in \u201cHeavy Metal,\u201d when the unbearable noise of thrash-metal leaking from a young man\u2019s headphones in church turns into a literal car wreck.<\/p>\n

\u201cEidolon,\u201d\u00a0perhaps the strongest poem in the collection, won the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize in 2015. The title comes from ancient Greek and refers to a spirit image of a person who may be living or dead, or to an idealized image of a person. This eidolon is the poet\u2019s son who phones from abroad where it seems he is serving a Mormon mission since he rides a bicycle and speaks a new language, but also because his voice reminds Bickmore of her own crisis of faith: \u201cI collect photographs of altars although I kneel at none. \/ The church on the corner hides an empty nave where the icon should go.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

If I had written these poems, I might have titled the whole collection \u201cEidolon\u201d after this bereaved and lonesome poem, but Bickmore chose the title \u201cEphemerist\u201d from a poem about work by the artist Andy Goldsworthy composed of \u201cfour walls made of slates retrieved from houses demolished in Edinburgh.<\/em>\u201d (The sculpture is \u201cEnclosure\u201d [2000] at the National Museum of Scotland). Goldsworthy is known for making fleeting artworks out of natural materials and letting them decay back into the landscape. These particular rocks have been taken into a museum as an artistic editorial on archaeology and then re-constructed into a \u201csimulacrum of a home\u00a0<\/em>\u2026\u00a0do not touch or it will come apart.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

After starting with a jab at writing, Bickmore demonstrates exactly how to use that keyboard as a tool to dig deeply into personal obsessions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Dust<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

what we found when we pulled the carpets<\/h4>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 could have made a small industry,<\/h4>\n

pennies prettying the sifted and settled<\/h4>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 years of waste, subfloor with a web<\/h4>\n

of money and safety pins, dog hair,<\/h4>\n

cat dander, and we swept, the broom<\/h4>\n

by the end deeply familiar with every inch,<\/h4>\n

we swept and prised up staples, and<\/h4>\n

washed the floorboards until they resumed<\/h4>\n

their color, aged and nicked:<\/h4>\n

then the bamboo, engineered, panels<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

dovetailing and malleted so as to lock:<\/h4>\n

the week it was installed, we kept the dog<\/h4>\n

outside or downstairs, an injustice by his lights,<\/h4>\n

but if a foretaste of the dustlessness<\/h4>\n

we aimed for, foolish, for when it was complete,<\/h4>\n

the rooms blonde, gleaming, and we\u2019d paid<\/h4>\n

our final fortune, we brought it all back,<\/h4>\n

our lives\u2019 furnishings, the settees,<\/h4>\n

shelves, beds, all with small felt shields<\/h4>\n

wherever a foot or leg touched the floor,<\/h4>\n

and the dog came back too, roared around,<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

his toenails a click and groove,<\/h4>\n

and because it was new, we buffed it<\/h4>\n

weekly, saw the gradual patterns of our living<\/h4>\n

engrave themselves upon its sheen,<\/h4>\n

hair of dog, of cat, of ourselves, small clouds<\/h4>\n

of dust along the walls and nebulae<\/h4>\n

of dust forming systems of weather<\/h4>\n

under the bed, and gradually we inured<\/h4>\n

ourselves to it, we built our nest from it,<\/h4>\n

harvested it with the vacuum<\/h4>\n

the dog tried to bite as we steered it<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

into corners and under sofas, with the duster<\/h4>\n

inherited from a many years gone mother,<\/h4>\n

pulled puffs together with our fingers:<\/h4>\n

it was us, we knew, it was a sloughing<\/h4>\n

of the skin, of hair, it came from sex,<\/h4>\n

from long summers, too much sun,<\/h4>\n

roughhousing with the dog, stroking the cat,<\/h4>\n

from the chafe and shrug of work,<\/h4>\n

from turning again and again in sleep:<\/h4>\n

and from the back field creatures arrived,<\/h4>\n

and would not be gathered nor swept,<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

and disappeared at the peripheries of sight,<\/h4>\n

behind chairs, under bureaus, interlopers<\/h4>\n

who made us see it, the dust that had become<\/h4>\n

our atmosphere: as they invited<\/h4>\n

themselves to the brink of the little box<\/h4>\n

in the hall, its baiting of saltine,<\/h4>\n

fragrant with peanut butter crumbling<\/h4>\n

over time, but they did not enter,<\/h4>\n

and asked voicelessly:\u00a0what of your guests?<\/em><\/h4>\n

And we knew then no guest should be made<\/h4>\n

to live here: we wished for our guests<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

a house built in a volcano\u2019s remains,<\/h4>\n

or sited among beech and birch,<\/h4>\n

a house in early spring, a cold house,<\/h4>\n

a house through which ice had moved,<\/h4>\n

carrying with it all our leavings and losses:<\/h4>\n

for the guests, it should be a house without<\/h4>\n

our gross dismantling selves, a house<\/h4>\n

without the small specter of mice<\/h4>\n

skittering down the hall\u2014or was it<\/h4>\n

a gust, a breath of wind, moving dust as if<\/h4>\n

it were mice, toward our little human trap?<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ephemerist<\/em>
\nLisa Bickmore
\nRed Mountain Press
\n2017
\n74p.
\n$18.95<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Lisa Bickmore<\/a>\u00a0is a Professor of English at Salt Lake Community College where she has served as SLCC poet laureate since 2015 and where she is one of the founders of the Publication Center.\u00a0 She holds an BA and MA in English from BYU.\u00a0 Previous books of poetry include\u00a0Flicke<\/em>r<\/a>\u00a0(2016) and\u00a0Haste\u00a0<\/em>(1994).<\/p>\n

Lisa Bickmore will appear during the Utah Humanities Book Festival Oct. 26 at the Westminster Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry series,\u00a0with poet\/essayist Lia Purpura (7 pm, Gore School of Business Auditorium)<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n