Horse
Dance Underwater by Helena Mesa
Cleveland
State University Poetry Center, 2009
Reviewed by
Steven Karl
ÒThe way we structure
our sentences in English — always a subject doing something in space and
time — requires us to make constant decisions about occurrence, fluidity,
and capture. By capture, I mean how much of
the experience in question one can actually represent in language.Ó[i]
I think this Renee Gladman quote succinctly articulates Helena MesaÕs first
book, Horse Dance Underwater.
Many poets whose work is informed by narrative struggle with story, that
is how much to put into a poem. As a reader I often find myself feeling
frustrated by too much telling and not enough Òexperience.Ó MesaÕs poems are rooted in narrative
but the narrative never overwhelms or becomes the poem. Instead, she gives us just enough to
enter into the poem then fragments the narrative so that her poems feel like
many shards of glass bathed in sun or submerged in a muddy river bottom. Horse Dance Underwater is divided into three
untitled sections but unified by themes of lost, longing, and the pathos of the
experience.
MesaÕs voice is
refreshing because it feels both immediate and refined and her poems
encapsulate some of the best music IÕve read in recent years from a
contemporary poet. This is a book that youÕll want to read aloud in the silence
of your room to feel the air alight then sag with weighted words. ÒSway This Night,Ó begins, ÒIt
reminds me of departure, this town/ gutted with rails and passing trains whose
horns/ insist we waste our nightsÉ/Ó The way the t operates in the first two
stanzas is exhilarating, the harsh ending of ÒItÓ then followed by Òdeparture,Ó
Òtown,Ó Ògutted,Ó and Òtrains,Ó the way the tongue is repeatedly forced to
thrust in the top of the mouth is indicative of her musical sensibility, yet
for how tightly wound this stanza is it is also immediate. Even with the words IÕve chosen one can
get a sense of narrative, here are the last six stanzas of the same poem,
someone
lies across the tracks after last call
before
the sky melts like beeswax, the stillness
a
wisp of air like madness in fear.
No more,
no
more. Even the wind pressed off
the sides
pushes
back, its metal cold, like the loss of breath
after
a blow. The body stands, sway, in
wait.
Mesa smartly allows for
mystery in her poems by not giving proper names to a majority of the people who
appear in this book. They become
Òsomeone,Ó or a ÒbodyÓ which gives the readers room to imagine a face, a voice,
and a look. She does this
exceedingly well in the poem, ÒTonight, No Sleep,Ó which is about being awaken
by a wrong caller. The poem ends
with these last four couplets,
How
comfort from such distance?
This
sky, this strangerÕs same sky
with
its slighted light of winter stars,
begs
to hold the line. One slip
and
IÕm an intruder without words
for
his grief. No storm builds,
no
cello dusks the heart. He is
alone,
his
face a stone without eyes, mouth.
The poem works because
Mesa lets the ÒheÓ remain a stranger to the poem. Much like Claudia RankineÕs DonÕt
Let Me Be Lonely, MesaÕs book continues to ask and struggle with what to do with a
world full of sadness. What is our
responsibility to both those we know and do not know. But the poem concedes, ÒHe is alone.Ó So MesaÕs poems smartly do what they do
best and that is to ÒcaptureÓ this experience and allow us to feel and wrestle
with the pathos. MesaÕs book is an ambition collection filled with a clarity
that rushes, slinks, and seethes—poems that will ask you to reevaluate
your interior world, as well as, the world around you.