It’s thrilling to have a new poem from Lee Upton in our latest issue, but of course it’s not the same as reading her work in book form, where the arc of her imagination has more space to shine in its uniqueness and rigor. These last few weeks I’ve been spending some time with Upton’s earlier poems, particularly those in her fourth book, Civilian Histories (UGA Press, 2000). There is something serious and high-minded, ancient and cosmopolitan, in that title, a sense of cultivated energy that seems particularly appropriate for this restless and far-reaching collection. These are poems of high-octane language and imagery, but that vigor also extends deeper into the turns of tone, purpose, and sensibility from one poem to the next.
Lee Upton: photo by Cece Ziolkowski
Many of these poems are tender, confessional. In “Asiatic Lily,” for instance, the title once again does much: exotic and alluring, it introduces the central image of the flower, which the speaker’s daughter brings to her after forgetting she was not supposed to pick it. It also reflects qualities of the relationship the flower comes to represent as a metaphor. As we glide and catch in the poet’s meditation, the ending explodes with the lines, “Why would I have cared // for such a small affection as the lily, why when / my life’s love brought it to me.” This revelation, at once obvious and shocking, seems to have the intoxicating power of the flower that occasions the emotional response, reversal, and final epiphany of this poem.
Other poems are narrative and surreal, reminiscent of James Tate’s most interesting work. In one, a family tree grows downward in Hell. Others still are dramatic monologues, one in the voice of a drug addict who finally accuses us, “You will never know how to feel good.” One poem takes an epigraph from Emily Dickinson and adopts Dickinson’s voice with remarkable facility.
Formally, everything seems available to Upton, from occasional rhyme and refrain to one-line stanzas and brief, italicized lines. Remarkably that range strikes me not simply as stylistic gymnastics, but as an expression of what Denise Levertov termed organic form. I found myself engaged by both the poems of unashamed, undressed emotion and those lyrics whose unsentimental imagination stemmed from more detached and distant speakers. This is a book by a teeming and elegant mind.
—Jasmine V. Bailey
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