I think Gustafson had me At the Cliff’s Edge. p. 33 when he said “the rake/and noonhour leaned against the wall.” Scalp tingles. That pays attention to the world keenly.
p. 9 of Ralph Gustafson‘s Tracks in the Snow, (Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan, 1994)
I love how he presents. There are slow turns that balance each other. The title is immediately deepens the opening line. Without “the burden” setting it up, the opening line would be flatly ecstatic. Instead, I’m wondering, sarcastic or what does he mean by burden. The flavour is nuanced. It takes a wide stance of embrace then in stanza two becomes completely the opposite. One catches oneself with what is at hand, common. There’s a sense of tongue in cheek, “so it is known just where you are”. This saves it from being the narrator bored and stupid but a double sense of knowing where you are on what you measure, or by whether you use metric or imperial, your age, your country, perhaps your loyalty.
Stanza three confirms this suggestion. Measurement is bout continent, old wold or new. Forward or backwards looking. The scope is broadened out again to worldscale general but with specifics. There are concretes. Still all the content is pretty neutral yet phrased in a way so it is not bland. You can see the mind working.
Stanza four twists and extends. Still teh everyday language, the offhand manner, and yet we’re talking about commonplace here, eating and measuring and commonplace as that, murder. We are delivered grisly but in a concrete, matter-of-fact way.
Stanza five segues. Our associations from news are all murder from the middle east and yet here he twists again. He brings back the wood from the ruler, the measuring, the concrete everyday and reopens it to hope. People everywhere just want to build their houses, help who is their peer. And thus we cycle back to the ecstatic beginning. And the title and the burden of knowing these world of senseless violence and sense of non-violence co-exist. This is a kind of burden, this background of our informed world, far off and near.
Beautifully rendered and rich for re-reading. He can anticipate the flowers of what he seeds reference to. Because he addresses our assumptions, he demonstrates he’s aware of what we’ll think next but the departure from that direction doesn’t feel like yanking one about but redirecting to another vantage point so collectively it adds up to a more complete whole.
There’s a structure, logic and progression without making one feel wrestled down a chute of perspective. Even though he makes abrupt shifts and covers a lot of ground, it all hangs together and parts complementing and anticipating other parts. There is plenty of grace and skill and the person seems like he has his head together. He has peace with the ugly without it displacing the good.
p. 24, Tracks in the Snow, (Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan, 1994)
He’s willing to change his perspective, admit his sense and expectation fooled him and do so in a way that is not preaching and not self-denigrating. And then he takes that experience and expands it out to a sense of receiving kindness from the world. Even in deep winter, all is not stripped away to the harshness of bark. Perhaps it is whimsical, personifying nature as benevolent when it is nothing but parts summing to nothing more, really. But still, as spins go, this is one which opens hope rather than sense of threat.
p. 13 Let us Examine by Gustafson starts with statements of how the world is. And then counters it with quoted speech, with the reference to who being where the neighbour lives. That is the second pivot of expectations since “editorial comments” are not often paired with everyday dialogue. The third pivot in the stanza is a biblical reference yet densely packed. Implied are the speaker as Jesus about to be martyred. The neighbour as being callous against him by speaking openly, dismissively against what he knows his neighbour loves and makes a life of. And yet in this emotional response, there isn’t vindictive, bitter lash, but circumspect mind watching mind.
He leaves the poem not happy with his neighbour calling him out as impractical dreamer and uppity bourgeoisie. The poem is the argument on the line in a rebuttal. Shall we examine this poem as a case example that one can be excellent and exact? Let us broaden this across history, not to hitch your wagon to a myth but to be as critical of self as one is of one’s neighbour. The relationship is rich.
It’s nice to see a poet committed to what he is saying rather than a vague dabbling in here are some things that happened. If a poet doesn’t care about what they are talking about, it doesn’t make a great argument for anyone else to care.
I love it when something has had so much intention put into it that it will bear up to a close read rather than be all dry-waffle flakey.
(Nelson Balls’s Bird Tracks on Hard Snow was released the same year so probably was a coincidence. I wonder if there was a nod to Gustafson’s title in Well’s Track& Trace?)