Flight Problems: The Amelia Earhart Poems,
Paula Eisenstein
Pinhole Poetry Chapbook Press, 2024
To begin with, a confession: I have always been transfixed by the story of Amelia Earhart. That she was so much a woman who came before her time, in terms of the life she chose to live, and that she just disappeared without a trace, is a mystery that begs to be explored. My friend, Matt Heiti, has written a play about Earhart called Ever Falling Flight, and I loved Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s novel, Letters to Amelia. Before I even saw Heiti’s play, or read Zier-Vogel’s novel, or Paula Eisenstein’s Flight Problems: The Amelia Earhart Poems, I remember doing curious Google searches on her when I was much younger, wondering if recent photographic ‘finds’ over the years would pan out to become ‘the real deal’ when it came to finding her last resting place and that of her beloved plane, a Lockheed Electra.
Eisenstein begins her chapbook collection not with Amelia Earhart’s youth, but with a poem that conjures the time of her celebrity and fame—a time filled with flashbulbs and public appearances across North America. In “Winter of ’33,” the poet crafts a poem that moves across the page, writing about how Earhart’s “primary source of income/[was] coming from lecturing,” and how she “drove over seven thousand miles in six weeks/mostly alone/giving at least one interview at each stop/as well as the lecture.” At the end of such a harrowing and exhausting tour, Earhart “rented a modest house/in North Hollywood near Toluca Lake,” telling the media “she was on vacation.” Throughout the poem, Eisenstein braids in the image of “a butterfly pupa/going through a phase of life/to activate transformation.” The end of the piece is haunting, as the poet leaves the reader with the idea that “The pupal stage/lasts weeks, months, or even years/depending on the climate and insect species.” In contrast to today’s media (over)exposure of celebrities, Earhart’s encounters with the press and public seem tame, but—for her—were likely rather intense.
The poems that populate the early part of the collection refer to Earhart’s childhood—of how she moved between her parents’ Kansas City home and her maternal grandparents’ home in Atchison, Kansas, a place where “Gauzy bedsheets/the dead once crept in/bloom in the wind/on the clothesline.” They also refer to her father’s struggle with alcoholism, and to her parents’ very rocky relationship. What is solid throughout this cluster of poems (and her life) is Amelia’s relationship with her beloved sister, Muriel. They “run worm races” together, making “a harness from a grass//blade, a sulky/of a small leaf.” In playing these imaginative games, young Amelia feels able to fashion some sense of control over her life.
Eisenstein touches upon Earhart’s time as a nurse in the poem, “Toronto nurse succumbs,” writing of images that include open and decaying wounds, “bleeding stumps,” “bedpan chores,” as well as references to “the surgeon’s path” and “A cure that torments/and does not work.” When Amelia’s mother returns to her husband, in California, Muriel and Amelia follow, but, in “California,” Amelia (as the speaker) says, “Me,/I too am free like the black-capped chickadee//chick, that set off in fall to join a new flock,/about which studies show//no evidence of parental recognition/after the first year.” From there, Flight Problems moves into the flying poems. In “Opportunistic Cuckoo Egg,” Amelia’s voice speaks to the reader through time and space. She decries the addition of a man to her flight, saying “the reason: I/am a girl: I/am a nervous/lady: I might throw//myself out.” The man is just someone who’s been added to the flight to be sure that Earhart is protected, simply because women weren’t often pilots in the 1930s.
The poems recollect, and almost dovetail, the upset and struggle within Amelia’s family life. In “Preening,” the idea of Amelia purposefully creating an image or illusion is pointed to as including “riding breeches, lace up boots,//a well-tailored/jacket.” To complete the image, a “library book/on practical/aeronautics” is tucked under her arm. Cloudy skies in “Fly days” are compared to “our parents’/dog sick marriage,” and in “Mother leaves father, returns to Boston. So do I,” the reader begins to understand that Earhart was not impressed by the idea of marriage: “The doctor says that scientifically/he can make me/fall in//love. I don’t want to./There’s something wrong with me.” That doctor compares Earhart to a “caged mynah bird,” but what she feels to be, to this modern reader, is someone who was simply born before her time. She had a dream, a wish, and she set out to make it real.
A series of creatures with wings—both birds and insects—make their way through the poems in Flight Problems, further drawing a connection to Amelia Earhart’s own love for flying. In “Satin Moths,” “the spring lock of the cabin door breaks./The door hangs open like a mouth.” The people who are struggling to close the door, then, are referred to as clinging “like the satin moths//that swarm around the willow trees at dusk/in June July and August.” In “Passenger Pigeon,” the voice of AE (Amelia Earhart) speaks to her fiance, George Putnam: “your protective nature…reminds me/of an African Wild Dog.” She concludes, firmly: “know this:/I would rather dream./I would rather do. I would rather fly.” On the day of her wedding, in “Cowbird (Feb 7 1931),” the poet writes: “She kept her own/name though did not mind Mrs. Putnam/socially.” In “Black Swan,” there is, again, the recognition of how feminist Earhart was during a time when feminism was derided: “A girl can be/any one/she wants to be.” To fight against the cult of domesticity in the 1930s, to be the exception to the rule, would have been difficult, and sometimes I think maybe Earhart found freedom from the too strict conventions of a patriarchal society while she was flying her plane and breaking aviation records.
I reached out to Paula Eisenstein to ask her about her fascination with exploring Amelia Earhart’s story through the poetic form, mostly because of my own interest in the mysterious tale. She responded by telling me that she wanted “to have a heart-to-heart conversation with an imaginary Amelia” in her mind. That ‘imaginary Amelia,’ as Eisenstein calls her, “had no qualms with the kind of energy I wanted to bring to this project. She wasn’t fazed by my desire to investigate the less seemly parts of her life.” There’s so much of the element of ekphrasis in this poetic undertaking that Eisenstein calls Flight Problems: The Amelia Earhart Poems, as the poet explores a very well-known woman’s life. Given the scope of Earhart’s accomplishments, and the fascinating way in which Paula Eisenstein approaches it poetically, it would be lovely to see this chapbook evolve into a larger poetic project in the future. In the meantime, avid poetry readers should be sure to check out Pinhole Poetry’s chapbooks, published by Erin Bedford. They’re beautifully crafted and full of excellent poems.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her most recent books include The Pollination Field (Turnstone, 2025) and The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). She is the Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC) and recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. Kim may be reached via her author website at Kim Fahner - Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Teacher.
