About Beneath Stretching Pines
Beneath Stretching Pines is a short collection of only 30 poems. As such, the book might look at first like a quick read, especially as each poem is short. However, I found myself going back and forth a little at times or re-reading a poem I had just read. It is not the purposeful shifts in style but how the voice of the author itself shifts from “noise to meaning” at each re-read. The author, Kurtis A. Ebeling, utilises various forms, ranging from imagistic and deconstructed works to more traditional and rhythmically structured forms. I found out for the first time for example about the “delicate” (for lack of a better word) form that is the pantoum. In the book’s description, I read that “this collection of poems contends with the potentially interwoven and co-emergent nature of experience, language and selfhood.” But I find more in my own reading, and beyond my own interpretation, even at times, drips of my own voice.
Beneath Stretching Pines: From stylish “noise to meaning”
At first, the two first poems, Sonnet in Search of Sleep and Cluttered Sky did not touch me. It is not that I am insensitive to their beauty. But I could not find the face of the author or his direction, elements that I seek, even at first read. These imagistic lines read as beautiful words in their look at nature but I couldn’t sense a meaning or a point. I liked the style but I was not gripped at the heartstrings… at least not until poem number 3, For Lilith. For Lilith gave me hope that the two first poems were a slow if not a false start. I was so grateful for For Lilith that right then it became my favourite poem already… that is until I read A Dialogue Appraising Selfhood. Starting as silhouette or voice, the artist gradually unveils himself, betraying how I read him in the beginning, as “only a noise until heard as meaning”, or in this case, until read as meaning. Oh what a beautiful revelation mimicking the way that we perceive the world, read a book, discover everything and everyone. He gives of his true self, shows his face behind style and nature, as much within the lines as whilst we interpret its symbols. The poet’s secret is revealed. He oscilliates between light verses of nature unclothed and introspective verses of his naked psyche. The parallel is astonishing.
Beneath Stretching Pines – Between naturehood and selfhood
I then read Conversation and suddenly I had to go back to the two first poems. Suddenly, the voice of the author was clearer to truly understand them, and finally I did. I was among the elements of nature described, feeling all at once the passage of time and its constance in the passage of matter. The author’s pen floats between introspection and outside observation, almost as they mirror each other in an eternal dance of changing partners and changing selves. Man is a main character but so are trees, from their rooted roots to their threshed leaves willow to pines.
His use of hyphens, throws me at times, because of how long the phrases sometimes are between parenthesis. But when you find the thread again, you’re can enjoy the meaning. and there I am free to open up again. and thankfully saw for i learned about pantoums with the great example that is Death Leaves You: A Pantoum. I cannot go through each one although they did not all have the same effect on me, obviously. I remember Postlude now and its dancing rhythm that invites you to all that is happening around your skin and senses.
Finally…
The author expertly draws parallels between selfhood and naturehood to the point that I start to see one in the other, almost as if introspection leads to the outside (a semantic form that I immensely enjoy), the environment that comprehends in more sense than one and thereby nurture creaturehood. This makes the rest of the read an enjoyable one.
I am sure that if I investigate the author himself, a lot more will become apparent between these poetic lines. But his pen is seasoned enough to give us the right amount of soul nutrients and as Maya Angelou paraphrased would say, the right aftertaste. That is all that matters in any read, that is all that stays.
I am not a fan of the cover. I’d like to think that it is some designer X-ray style view of nature (man and mother) to reflect the book content. Whether it is the case or not, I kepe thinking a different take might have done this better.
Still, I am touched by the author’s approach to death, to life, to breath. I am filled with the constant exchange between nature and selfhood as she gazes upon us, as we mirror her. And vice-versa. An enjoyable read. And re-read that is as all we read should be, deep and unveiling more of its ink and its pen after each visit.