Sherry Chandler

into that Garden myth:

That humans have been afraid of snakes for a long time is not a fresh observation; that this fear may be entwined with our development as a species is. New anthropological evidence suggests that snakes, as predators, may have figured prominently in the evolution of primate vision — the ability, shared by humans, apes and monkeys, to see the world in crisp, three-dimensional living color.

I was browsing around in the Friends Book Cellar the other day, checking out their tiny poetry section as I always do when I ran across a brand-new looking volume with the intriguing title On the Road to Patsy Cline (Minnesota Voices Project #77 from New Rivers Press, 1996).

I couldn’t resist that title. Nor have I been disappointed in the poems.

Check out this opening to the title poem:

She could extend a note into a bruise.

My God, you think, so she could, but I didn’t realize it until now.

John Reinhard is the poet’s name. I’d never heard of him, though I probably should have, so I started searching for information. Unlike most of us these days, the man doesn’t have a great web presence. I found this little bio at The Loft Center, a couple of poems here and here. Found an e-mail address and zipped off a message and received this very gracious response:

Glad to know a Kentucky girl will let this Michigan/Minnesota boy get away with openly loving country music

Well, Hector’s Pup! This Michigan boy can teach me things about country music I never began to dream.

Look at these lines here from “Rising Above the Earth:”

When my arms were empty
even of that slight weight
I held
to the shadow sketches
of blonder days.

I held to Monet,
whose work she mimicked,
Who painted, she said,
like Hank Williams sang,
sadness blurred in everything.

Talk about yoking the dissimilar. This poetry is downright metaphysical.

The titles alone bring a smile: “After Skinny Dipping, the Old Couple Fishes for Brown Trout in the Root River,” “Jimmy Pohoski’s a Woman Now,” “Emily Dickinson’s Ankle,” and the sweetest of them all, “That Night I Didn’t Make Love at the Flamingo Motel in Long Prairie, Minnesota:”

…I’m feeling the wild
pure notes sounding off
inside me, as if they’ve
figured out how it is
not making love the first time
with someone you really love is
so much louder than making love
the first time with someone
you don’t love, will never
love, no matter how
passion spreads through
your body like a rumor.

The poems in On the Road to Patsy Cline are accessible but not simple-minded. Their music is subtle and pure, with perhaps more of the complex Willie, less of the three-chord primitive Hank. They are charming and filled with love, both sadness and joy blurred in everything. Like country music—

…the road you’ve been looking for,
where the sign tells you this
is the Patsy Cline Memorial Highway,
a shoulder to cry on,
a good road to ride.