Pedestal Magazine Review of Kakalak 2007 Anthology

2007 Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets
Edited by Richard Allen Taylor, Beth Cagle Burt, and Lisa Zerkle
Contest judge, Peter Meinke
Main Street Rag
ISBN Number: 978-1-59948-0178-7

Reviewer: James Owens

Poetry is not bound by geographic borders. Given a common language and a bit of insight into cultural practices, or at least decent footnotes, a reader in Colorado, let´s say, or Maine will not feel too discomfited when reading a poem from India or Nigeria or County Cork. Nevertheless, grouping together poems and poets from a certain region has always seemed to make intuitive sense. Surely Ukrainian poets have suffered under the weight of a common history and so have things to say to each other that might be worth our overhearing, if we place several of them side by side. All Tunisian poets look out on the same sun-baked and wind-scoured landscape and find the same torn scraps of a colonial past blown here and there against the sides of ancient buildings, so the interest of printing their poems alongside Tamil or Mayan poets and finding the similarities that run through diversity might not recoup the dilution of shared vision. At the most mundane and literal level, poets who live within fair driving distance might be more likely to have met and exchanged influences in theme and technique.

These speculations, like most critical schemata, are sometimes true, sometimes not. The 2007 edition of the Kakalak Anthology, edited by Richard Allen Taylor, Beth Cagle Burt, and Lisa Zerkle, with Peter Meinke doing a turn as contest judge, gathers poetry and artwork from both North and South Kakalak, a word that Urban Dictionary.com defines as "an endearment of the Carolinas, especially by people raised in the area who have moved elsewhere. Conveys a tongue-in-cheek quality, a willingness to laugh at oneself and one's origins, while still remaining proud and affectionate towards them."

Kakalak, as any thoughtful anthology should, both confirms and refutes its ostensible reason for being. Though all 111 poets are from the Carolinas, the poems are set just about everywhere, from Mexico to Normandy, as well as some that do name identifiable Kakalak locales and a majority that unfold in the unnameable any-space of the mind. Themes range from fishing to sex to theology to physics and every point in between. The poets write in a variety of styles, sometimes verging off toward the experimental, though mostly tending toward workshop-and-journal-standard expressive free verse. On the other hand, the poems do lean together for mutual support often enough to make the anthology feel like a considered book, rather than a mere chance assemblage.

Contest judge Meinke chose Steve Lautermilch´s "Coins for the Tillerman" for a first-place prize, out of a field of twenty finalists the editors had, in turn, winnowed from over eight hundred entries. It would be hard to argue with the selection. Lautermilch´s is one of those poems where every word seems both a surprising twist and an inevitable assent to what has come before. This elegy´s love for the dark music of the language is palpable.

I see you, my uncle, reading the water,
rowing the channel, paying out the hours,

fishing the edge of shallow and deep, the tell
of ferrule eyelet and tip a baton to keep time, the waggle

of silver astern, a minnow, a mouse, streaks of widening ripples
trolling and playing, swimming and diving the wake.

"Coins for the Tillerman" may be among the language´s best poems about fishing, in a league with those of Ted Hughes and the prose of Norman McLean. It is also, as poems about fishing tend to be, an ars poetica where fish rise to the intent gaze of the fisherman like words from the deep subconscious, where a line sometimes lucks upon a live tug and silver flash. Here the stars rising in reflection on the water "spill and scatter their coins, syllables seeding a fountain,/ bedding the source, songs for the hunter rising and floating."

Allan Wolf´s second-place "The Poet, Not Content with the Ballet of Raking Leaves" is another ars poetica, this one gently self-ironizing. Though the poet of the title, tired of his rake, "settles underneath the tree to compose the perfect work," it is only when he falls asleep during the effort that his language is freed to become a living poem.

His mouth hangs open, empty
as a hundred missed commuter trains. Asleep,

Milton-like, struck blind, he finally forgets the meaning of green.
Imagine what exotic language would arise isolated
from the fact of language. To dream a foreign town of alphabets:
the exquisite simple curve of a C, the certain solidity of a D,
the architectural angle of an A, the soothing womb of a B–
letters leaving their bags at home to venture on their own.

Rebecca Warren´s "Hands," which Meinke chose to round off third place, is a meditation on the relationship of mind and body.

For a long time, my hands have lived without water....
I have held them as captives, I have worked them as slaves.
And I did not listen, and they did not say.
Now I find they have gone down to the ocean,
they have gone down deeper than water.
And I have followed them, lost, without speaking.

Last year´s first-place poet, Alex Grant, is back with four poems in this edition of Kakalak as a "special guest contributor." The editors suggest that bringing each year´s first-place poet back for an ampler selection may become a regular feature of this anthology series, and it would be a welcome addition, if future guests are as accomplished as Grant and Lautermilch.

The artwork scattered throughout the book includes winning photographs by Lautermilch, Donna H. Goodman, and Heather Dearmon, as well as photos and paintings by many other Kakalak artists. The placing of artwork seems well considered to complement the poems and the rhythm of the book as a whole.

2007 Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets deserves the attention of readers far beyond the more or less arbitrary borders drawn by politicians. Its vision of unity within diversity and the power of the poem to body forth both qualities at the same time is, ultimately, large enough to include us all.