by Nicole Yurcaba
2023 did not begin well for the literary world. On 10 January, Pulitzer-Winning poet, Serbian-born American, and US Poet Laureate Charles Simic died at the age of 84. On 7 January, self-taught American poet Noami Replansky – whose poetry tackled subjects such as manual labor, the Holocaust, poverty, and racism – died at the age of 104. Nonetheless, the news hasn’t been entirely bleak. This month a re-issue featuring sixteen new poems of David Young’s Field of Light and Shadow: New and Selected Poems hit the literal and digital shelves, offering readers sentimental, imagistic, evocative verses echoing Frost and Simic.
Speaking (again) of Charles Simic, one the standout poems in Field of Light and Shadow is “Phenomenology for Dummies,” which Young dedicates to Simic. It carries jarring lines, like “None of us has long, we hear, / and just so many poems left,” which pay homage to that startling moment when one reckons with their mortality. Like Yeats’s “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” it also pays tribute to the moment when a poet recognizes when their creative abilities are tapering. The speaker also possesses the type of self-awareness which arrives with age – people with whom they have lived, interacted, and created are dying. Who will remain? Only time and destiny know for sure.
The grieving cycle also makes a prominent appearance in the collection. “Elegy in the Form of Invitation” follows “Phenomenology for Dummies” in its reverent recognition of the dead. This poem is personal, straightforward. Three memorable lines center the poem: “I like to think you could come back here now / like a man returning to his body / after a long dream of pain and terror.” These lines are not only an intimate remembrance of the dead but also a seance of sorts. The poem’s structure subtly follows the grief process’s steps, and by its end, the speaker accepts the loved one’s death:
But there is this fierce green
and bean shoots poking through potting soil
and in a month or so the bees
will move like sparks among the bees.
Charles Simic isn’t the only literary great to make an appearance in Young’s book. Young offers a small memorial to Paul Celan in “Paul Celan by Starlight.” A brief poem structured in three stanzas and twelve lines, it’s a distant poem, relying on natural imagery to shape the reader’s experience. Celan is a solitary figure, “gazing upward, letting his great bitterness / stream out through galaxies and constellations.” The phrases “somewhere in the distance” and the acknowledgement “The past’s a horror” create a noirish tone. Lines end with words like “emptiness” and “needs,” creating a dismal, hopeless perception as one poet faces the universe’s vastness.
Even though the poems cannot be generalized as Transcendentalist, readers will immediately notice the environmental themes dominating the collection. Perhaps, given Young’s reputation as an environmentalist, readers should expect this. “Landscape with Grief Train” is another highlight in the collection. Its economic, commonplace language divests the grief of its complexity. The speaker describes the grief train simply: “Such a huge locomotive, the grief train, / panting, ugly, shiny, and black.” It’s a train with “many cars to pull / and a very long distance to travel.” The speaker focuses more on the appearance and purpose of the grief train than they do the landscape. In fact, the speaker’s references to “mountain passes,” “white-flecked rivers,” and “stars” are the only allusions to nature appearing in the poem.
“A Valediction Discounting Sorrow” prompts readers to remember that one’s end is merely a new beginning. Thematically and structurally, the poem echoes the likes of works by Staurt Dischell in Dischell’s collection The Lookout Man. Simplistic language and minimalist, natural depictions ebbing and flowing between single lines and couplets create a sense of transcendence. The speaker sheds life’s materialism: “I take off the weight of houses, walls, / the sorrow of floors and ceilings.” The emotional impact forms as the speaker unifies with nature: “Birds know me, deer raise their heads.” As the final poem in the collection, this poem couldn’t conclude on a more positive and reassuring note: “I am walking out into the light.” Should this ending surprise readers? Perhaps not.
In the best way, Field of Light and Shadow rivals collections like Michael McFee’s A Long Time to Be Gone. Young’s writing is accessible and personal. Readers can accept the poems at face value, or they can dive headlong into the philosophical realms of field-frolicking foxes, long-owned globes, and boxed-up letters and leave with the quiet gifts Young’s poems offer.
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian (Hutsul/Lemko) American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.
