The Meaning of Leaving, Kate Rogers
AOS Publishing, 2024
Many of the poems in The Meaning of Leaving, by Kate Rogers, speak to the idea of our own transience as humans. We evolve from one person into another as we gain various life experiences, moving through the years with seemingly increased speed as we get older. The tone of the collection is established with the inclusion of a fitting quotation from Basho which both makes a statement and poses a philosophical question: “I am a crow riding the wind./…Where will I land?” This could be a literal or metaphorical wondering, depending on how it’s interpreted by the reader. Beyond the ways in which humans change during their time on earth, though, Rogers also broaches themes of survival, exploration, and curiosity. The poems in The Meaning of Leaving are also about figuring out when it’s time to leave something, somewhere, or someone—even if it’s very difficult while you’re doing it.
Early in the book, Rogers writes about intimate partner violence, depicting the intense struggle and trauma of it in well-crafted and cutting poems like “Derrick’s Fist” and “The Passing of Sean Connery.” In the first poem, the speaker says that her first husband’s fist finds itself planted “in the orbit of my right eye,” and that there is a “Molar fractured” at the same time. The poem records the fading of the bruising afterwards, documenting its shift in colour and healing from red to yellow over the course of a week. In the second poem, the speaker addresses domestic abuse as a catalyst to her departure from a marriage: “When you punched me in the eye/the pain cleared my vision.” Years later, after her ex-husband’s death, the speaker’s mind reveals even more violent memories that had been hidden away in her mind: “You dragged me/by my hair across our Hong Kong flat,/the herring bone parquet floor/etched my cheek./Splinters lodged in my thighs.” The speaker’s departure from that part of her life ushers in a welcome new beginning.
There’s a marked shift from the first section of the book to the later ones. The poet explores the idea of what it means to leave a life behind—in terms of moving continents, but also with reference to moving away from domestic abuse and into newer, healthier relationships. In a series of vivid and evocative Hong Kong-based poems, Rogers paints a picture of what it was like to live in China for twenty years. In “Twenty Years in the People’s Republic of China,” the speaker is told that she must begin to think that “Tiananmen never happened,” as a supervisor warns the new teacher not to speak up or voice her western-influenced opinion in this new place. In “Migration,” the speaker refers to pro-democracy protestors as if they are black moths, their “black-clad bodies/swarm the streets” while one “trembles/on a window ledge,/framed by a police spotlight.” When taking attendance in her class the next day, she worries that all of her students may not be present. Nothing feels safe inside the world of this Hong Kong, despite the beauty that is conveyed in the earlier poems that depict walks in the nature conservation areas near the city.
Migration is a common theme in The Meaning of Leaving, with the poet paying close attention to the world around her. Her travels, and her immersion in various cultures, result in richly imagistic poems that build worlds for the reader to sink into. Her return to Canada from Hong Kong means that she is even more aware of the sharp social contrasts offered up for consideration. In “Daphne and I Walk Beside the Don River,” the speaker writes of an unhoused man who lives in a “tent beside the bridge,” wondering how he can sleep through nearby construction. In “Moss Park Encampment,” the poet writes of “three tatty nylon tents” and two men “seated/on plastic milk crates/in front of the tents.” Beyond that, there is a “body on the sidewalk” and police officers pulling “a tarp/over his hair.” From a distance, the “body under the tarp/[is] a question mark.” In China, there are threats to anyone who is vocally supportive of democracy in a society that doesn’t espouse it. In Canada, there are other types of threats to social welfare and well-being, ones that make the reader consider whether one sort of oppression and cruelty is any better than another.
There is also great beauty in so many of these poems—from the Zen gardens and plum blossoms that are described in “The Jizo Shrine,” to the sweet love poem, “Love Song, Edinburgh,” to the references to kintsugi, the traditional Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with bits of gold. In “Stop! Covid-19!”, the poet writes of “male red-winged blackbirds” that call out, “their yellow/and scarlet epaulettes/splashed among/last summer’s reeds.” In “Black Cloud,” there is a murmuration of starlings above a lake, distracting the walker from the threat of other human walkers who may carry the Covid-19 virus. The poem ends with the speaker saying, hopefully, “I want to know/birds will survive/the human plague./I want them/to be pilgrims forever.” The certainty of the birds’ continued presence during the pandemic lockdown offers the speaker great comfort, and she finds that her personal uncertainty is calmed by walking outside.
In the darkest times, Rogers seems to be saying, humans should look for beauty wherever they can find it— whether it be in the feeling of freedom that comes after escaping domestic abuse, or in the glimpse of birds that rise above the chaos of the human world, or just in letting go to trust the journey of life rather than trying to decipher it. In the end, The Meaning of Leaving is about how we should fight for the ideas and values that most matter, especially freedom from abuse or oppression. Perhaps, too, Rogers is also asking us, as readers, to consider what the notion of leaving means to us in our own lives, suggesting that we take a closer look at what we most value and what we most need to protect.
Kim Fahner lives and writes
in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest full collection of poems is Emptying the
Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022) and she's just published a poetry chapbook, Fault
Lines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023). She is the First
Vice-Chair for The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the League
of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Kim's first novel, The Donoghue Girl, will be published by Latitude 46
Publishing in Fall 2024. She may be reached via her author website at
www.kimfahner.com
