Literary Arts: Book Review
"Genius" in the Details
Lance Larsen's Genius Loci
by Michael McLane
In the wake of a spate of articles and rebuttals on the “death” and usefulness of poetry, on its accessibility, and other catalysts of infighting amongst schools of poets, Lance Larsen’s new collection, Genius Loci, came as welcome relief. Many of Larsen’s poems transcend such specialization and erudition. They are a reminder of what drew me to poetry in the first place – the nearly alchemical power of pointed observation and comparison, the irrepressible urge to make the unexplainable one’s own. So it was appropriate that he should include the poem “To Alchemy” amongst a section of odes in the book, which begins:
Salt crystals turning into sea monkeys, salamanders
into witches,…
…Here I am, middle-aged
and mortgaged, and still I believe.
sitting down to play Chopin, I hope
to be converted into electric mist
or a flock of wrens. When my father died,
I went bowling—anything to transform
the avalanche behind my breastbone
into crashes I could hear.
It is a rare poet that can make such self-effacing transformations routine, but that is one hallmark of Genius Loci. However, it is the less monumental moments– the “serenely electric body of a nursing mother at Denny’s,” the passive acquiescence of riders to an escalating domestic dispute on their bus, the “spoon carrying gruel to the dowager’s mouth” that becomes the heart of an ode – that, like those mourning pins, offer the hard crashing of one thing into another but result in quiet, nuanced examinations of human weakness and compassion.
Given the current dearth of Latin education, using the word genius in one’s book title, particularly a book of poetry, could be easily construed as a particularly ostentatious move. Even this reader, who should know better, paused for a moment at the title before going back to my OED (most online dictionaries can’t even be bothered with etymologies anymore) to remind myself of all the connotations of that word. That moment of refamiliarizing myself with protective spirits and generative powers inherent to genius reminded me of a characteristic of Larsen’s work as a whole – there is no pretense in these poems but their simplicity cannot be taken for granted either.
The incarnations and guardians that populate the places of Larsen’s poems are rarely the anthropomorphic beings of classic literature. More often they are animals, both wild with life and bloated and dismembered in death. Their perpetual presence is a fact Larsen self-consciously notes, as illustrated by the book’s second poem “Why Do You Keep Putting Animals in Your Poems?,” but not before opening the collection with a collection of stunning animal scenes, “rituals” of place to which we have largely lost access:
Horses are praying the old-fashioned way, trotting
a fenced field at twilight under a towel of moon…
Like the owl, I’ll take my wages in mice and falling
stars, take my midnights in the middle of the day.
The animals of these poems go about their business, largely unconcerned and unaware of their human spectators, despite the figurative roles their appetites and instincts play in shedding light on our own baffling human inconsistencies. Even when the human and animal paths intersect, as they do in “Owning the Snake,” it is clear that it is far easier to superimpose their morals upon our lives than it is to impose ours upon theirs. After relenting to his daughter’s cries when she witnesses a snake devouring two chicks from a bird’s nest, the speaker yanks the snake from the tree, only to spare his life, admitting that “this serpent I thought I owned, taking / some swallowed part of us into a darker fold.” The opening of this same poem is but one example of how easy it is to wish that all naturalists and biologists possessed Larsen’s lyricism after he begins:
Gorgeous and unnerving, the way he laddered
his body, all six feet of him, up to the first branch,
then used the collateral of his own sinewy loops
to cantilever himself higher, limb by limb,
rising in the pear tree like some highly evolved law
of deceit: awe zeroing my blood, sun dropping,
There are moments when the metaphors in the poems pile up, when the lyricism threatens to topple the work entirely into sentiment, as in “The Most Spider Part of Me,” in which the apotheosis of a spider (and its conflation with the speaker) extends a few sections too far, or in “To Duende,” where the ethereal ending overrides a powerful earthly experience (and Lorca makes a predictable appearance). But more often than not, Larsen deftly maintains a balance between such moments and moments of grounding and humor that consistently unravel seemingly established patterns. Often these moments appear in lists and litanies, favorite forms of Larsen in the book, including “Nothing Happy,” in which the speaker numbers unmet expectations, noting that “We are each a bingo parlor / dreaming of a knife fight, a worn copy of Ulysses hoping / to be burned” only to end in a couplet on the separation of body and soul at death that is equally humorous and tragic:
Blood says, I’ve always wanted to travel by myself.
Spirit whispers, finally a chance to grow my own fur.
Likewise, in “Tired,” a long list of things that exhaust the speaker is dismantled in the closing stanzas by a moment that simultaneously illustrates the deceptively simple observational prowess of Larsen’s work and the antithesis of such a skill, a deficiency all too familiar to those of us living ever-online lives:
Texting beside his rest home bed,
when she should have memorized
the stale air, bruises on his arm linked
like the Great Lakes,
the orange pad on the floor in case he rolled off,
Lest the excerpts in this review misrepresent the tone of the book as a whole, it should be noted that though Larsen writes exquisitely about the loss and deaths of loved ones and even animals, Genius Loci is by no means a eulogy or a book of mourning. It is alive and fluid and blossoming at every turn, be it children jouncing and gyrating “as if trying to coax rain out of the wispy clouds” or a geriatric marathon runner who nears the finish line and, as if “peering out at a new world, he tipped / back his head as if drinking the sky and he howled.” Larsen’s poems possess a startling clarity that creates broad vistas of longing and living from the briefest of moments. Here it is genius that is in the details, the protective force rooted firmly in both our most perceptible and our most vulnerable of places. Like the dancing grandniece at the funeral in “Between the Heaves of the Storm,” Larsen’s poems leave “Any worries about the next life set spinning / for now in reassuring orbits, rattly pink.”
Genius Loci
by Lance Larsen
University of Tampa Press (2013)
Editor’s Note: Lance Larsen will be the keynote speaker June 20th at the annual Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Conference at the Waterford School in Sandy. The event is free and open to the public.
Lance Larsen’s poetry collections include Backyard Alchemy (2009), In All Their Animal Brilliance (2005), and Erasable Walls (1998) and Genius Loci (2013). He holds a PhD from the University of Houston. His work appears widely, in such venues as Georgia Review, Southern Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, River Styx, Orion, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best American Poetry 2009, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. His nonfiction has twice made the Notable Essay list in Best American Essays. Since 1993 he has taught literature and creative writing at Brigham Young University where he currently serves as MFA Coordinator. In 2012, he was named to a five-year term as Utah Poet Laureate.
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Up and Upcoming: To The North
Exhibition Listings in Northern Utah
Prepared by 15 Bytes staff unless otherwise indicated. UPCOMING and UP listings should reach us by the last Wednesday of the month. Those accepted will run until the closing date, or for one month if no closing date is given. Readers using the guide are cautioned to check with the exhibitor if the accuracy of the listing is crucial. Please send listings for this page to editor@artistsofutah.org.
OGDEN AREA
The Ogden First Fridays Art Walk takes place every month on the First Friday of the month. Galleries will hold receptions 6-9 pm.
Whitespace UPCOMING: Whitespace gallery presents its inaugural exhibition. Located at 2420 Wall Avenue (1/2 block N of Historic 25th), WHITESPACE is available to outside curatorial projects and exhibition proposals in all media, from organizations and individuals seeking to expand contemporary art dialogue. Manager Scott Patria describes it as “a low-profit social enterprise that produces and hosts events, programs, and exhibitions for the purpose of developing artist-audience relationships in north central Utah.” Patria is owner of PATRAJDAS Contemporary, a Utah-based contemporary art project. PATRAJDAS will curate the June exhibition — Melange a group show of selected artists. The exhibition includes painting, photography and sculpture from across the US., with a special focus on visceral paintings by Rogelio Manzo, of Sacramento, CA |1|and a photographic study of texture and color by Amelju, of Ogden. WHITESPACE will host a preview event from 5-7pm on Friday, June 7. This event, in coordination with the Ogden Arts Festival, is free and open to the public. Through June 30.
Eccles Community Art Center UP: Mentors' Exhibit includes works created by local teachers. AND: Carriage House Gallery: Paintings by David Estes of Salt Lake City (see our video profile of Estes in the December 2012 edition of 15 Bytes).
Gallery 25 UP: Original oil, watercolor and pastel works. Handmade pottery, unique wooden items and jewelry round out the selections. Each artist is unique in their choice of style and subject matter enabling visitors to select from a wide variety of art in a warm and friendly atmosphere in a historic building. Through July 3.
BRIGHAM CITY
Brigham City Museum UP: Building History by Mary Alice Hobbs. Doors open wide on the past in the photography exhibition. The exhibit features 50 images of pioneer homes, businesses, churches and schools shot in Brigham City about 1900. Through June 26.
PARK CITY
The Park City Gallery Stroll usually takes place the last Friday of every month.
Kimball Art Center UP: Wasatch Back Student Art Show featuring work by student artists in Summit and Wasatch County Schools, grades K-12. The show features artwork from students that incorporates the theme, Around the World. Through June 12. UPCOMING: The 2007 French presidential campaign is the inspiration behind artist John Bell's politically charged exhibition titled, "Election."|2| The series is comprised of 21, limited-edition, digital archival prints created from photographs taken in Paris during the presidential election between Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal .This is the first time the series will be shown in its entirety along with a selection of the original photographs. Bell also is debuting five new prints exclusively for the Kimball Arts Center.
MEYER GALLERY UPCOMING: The unique paintings of artist Kaori Takamura. Her paintings are cut, stitched, and sewn pieces of painted canvas.|3| June 28 - July 19.
BOUNTIFUL
BOUNTIFUL/DAVIS ART CENTER UP: The Utah Watercolor Society Spring Open Exhibition. The exhibit is juried by Stephen Quiller, an internationally known painter who works primarily in watermedia, monotypes, and intaglio printmaking. The exhibit will feature 79 watercolor paintings by 67 watercolor artists. Through June 14.
These listings only include fine art exhibitions. If you are looking for information on lectures, art talks, classes, workshops, calls for entries, employment opportunities and more, visit our message board.
Artists of Utah News: Workshop
We Want You Online
We want you online. For over a decade Artists of Utah has been stressing the importance of having an online presence for visual artists. We recognize sometimes it can be tough. You've got a Facebook page, but you'd like to have a more formal site to send patrons and gallery owners to. Your nephew says he knows how to build a site, but you're not sure. Will he update it for you, or will it lie stagnant for years?
We're hear to help. Collaborating with (Zoe & Robert) we're providing our audience some important tools for getting online.
Get You and Your Work Shot
For the artists from our community, Zoe Rodriguez will be providing her photographic services for a very reduced rate. She'll be set up to shoot a headshot and all your 2-D artwork.
Website Workshop
In the fall 15 Bytes Editor and Artists of Utah webmaster Shawn Rossiter will be teaching a website workshop at The Leonardo. This summer he will be prototyping the workshop and is inviting artists from the community to enroll.
During an intense 4-hour workshop, Rossiter will provide hands-on training for building your site. Bring your laptop, your images and your text and Rossiter will take you through the process step-by-step. When you leave you'll have a functioning site. And you'll know how to use it. |
