Gentlewoman, Megan Kaminski
Noemi Press, 2020
In an exploited and precarious world, how can move through, reclaim, and honor what is left of nature? Of ourselves? Megan Kaminski’s new poetry collection, Gentlewomen, evokes the experiences of gathering, of caring and of re-envisioning/re-visiting the world we have (un)made. The words that constellate and collide on these pages are resonate and timely:
“We are all alone together” (43).
THE WALK
I was thinking
about the sisters on my walk today, the great allegorical trinity: Natura,
Providentia, and Fortuna. I was winding
my way through a hilly neighborhood of concrete and mountains, palm trees and
hazy sunlight. The streets became
narrative strands. I was thinking about what sisterhood means and about what
our relationships contain and maintain for each of us. I was also thinking
about our mother earth who continues to hold and nourish those who regard her
with indifference and even those who seek to destroy her for their own gain. I
was thinking about stability and sustainability, about how everything contains
and emits its own energy. About how
everything is personal. About how we,
much like the sisters, are now separately enduring:
This shouldn’t be so difficult--your
side
of the ocean no colder than mine and
coasts are often rocky and lined with stinking
fish and seaweed. I read your
letter again
(37)
THE TAROT
Later, I was
compelled to draw a tarot card for Megan, for her gorgeous book and for the
gentlewomen everywhere. The Emperor appeared which implies, as I understand it,
confrontation with authority, rigidity and the patriarchy. Not surprisingly, this card reflects the
struggle of the sisters, and of the collective, as they/we grapple with loss,
isolation, and anger. Kaminski reminds us that the earth is “Too easily
depleted and used” (23). The sisters are gentle with the earth, but are not
afraid to express rage and resistance to the systems that continue to destroy
us all. Natura proclaims: “When I rise
up strong at times furious,/I thunder might and with havoc,/sweep over
glasslands over sheets...I fuck factories spewing moke, tumble cities, light
oil wells on frozen tundra…”(15). The
sisters are (re)designing something together as in ritual, as in creativity, to
feel alive. There is also a sense of
simultaneity occurring: “...”I and my sisters,/ever present always listening”
(68).
THE DREAM
In the dream I was
looking for the sisters “Amongst/irrigation tubes and GPS planters” (29). Amongst ruin and rupture, I sifted through
space and looked for the lost girls, the motherless and the ghosts. Amidst catastrophe I scoured for a circle of
sisters in the interdimensional gathering.
I looked for traces of them “over miles of ocean” and in a “tree budding
pink sending shadow/across lawn”(45). I searched for them on the “highway
unfurling towards northern plains/unspooled unbroken bereft of pulse” (51). I
foraged in “The porous body of we and I and they and so” (42)
In Gentlewomen, Kaminski suggests a collective landscape and how we, the earth and all her inhabitants, are an extension of each other. This book is a catalyst for community, engulfing the reader with intensity, grace, rage and humor all at once. The sisters want to tell you about survival and about healing. They want to illuminate our possibilities.
