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Country of Memory
Charles Fishman
Uccelli Press
www.uccellipress.com
ISBN Number: 0-9723231-3-9
Reviewer: Barbara Crooker
Where is the country of memory, we ask ourselves, as we enter the world of Charles Fishman’s new book. Is it simply the past, the lost land of childhood, or is it something more? The poems in this collection show us the roads we navigate in our own lives-- childhood, yes, but also our parents’ lives, and those of our families, including our children, who represent the future. Fishman’s vision expands from the small island of the immediate family to the terrain of friendship, nature, and foreign travel, reminding us how widening the scope of our own vision deepens what we experience. And there are also journeys through darkness, to the shores of loss and mourning.
The title of the book comes from a quote by Derek Wolcott: “...all substance thins into mist/ and has its vague frontiers,/ the country of memory." The past is the first stop, and it is no accident that the frontispiece poem is titled “Beginning with a line from Eugenio Montejo": “In the lost land of my absent family." Section 1, "Through the Ice," brings us to the coast of childhood, the Eisenhower fifties, where we meet “The Photographer at 11": "Whoever has taken this photo/ clearly loves him." We learn some of the customs and culture of this new land, where movies replace church: “There was no priest but the projectionist,/ his one good sermon delivered, sotto voce,/ in pale blue smoke that pulsed like rays from a star" ("Saturday Matinee, 1954"). We learn, too, that memory cannot always be trusted: “The dark foliage of memory obscures/and deceives" (“The Photographer at 11"), that the province of the past is made of quicksand, that it shifts and changes.
The past remains a mystery, and we often spend our whole lives trying to discover it. Some of Fishman’s explorations involve expeditions to those other great unknowns, “Mother" and “Father." The second section, "After Darkness," has four poems with titles that begin with “My Father." The poems in this group are unflinching and unsentimental, but always moving: “...they saved me with the cold torch/ of their love" (“A Summer Night").
From poems about the parents, Fishman naturally progresses to poems about children (Section 3, "At the Edge"), which brings us to yet another country, the future. These lines from “Passing September" typify Fishman’s use of language and imagery:
And I saw that that day, too, would fade
toward night, that all sun-lit things
would darken and contract: that beauty,
and life itself, must vanish, though tightly,
tightly grasped.
In this section, Fishman also describes his coming into language: “He begins to see/ how the night empties light into time,/ how silence opens--a blue flower--in the brain" (“Blue Bicycles"). Throughout this collection, the work is tight--no extra beats or syllables--the line breaks exact, and each stanza is lapidary, a solid block of words.
And then Fishman takes us on longer trips (Section 4, "In Unknown Tongues"), to Greece: “We could have lived that way forever:/ you, at ease in the sun, the sea stretched out before us" ("The Sea at Poros"); Ireland: “This is where rain is speech" ("Swans in the Mist"); Israel: “The wind’s quick tongue/ licked each brick and left it gold" ("A Night in Jerusalem"); and Italy: “It is not what she tells us, alone, that moves/ and alters us: we have long known the details" ("A Guide at the Synagogue of Rome"). Fishman pushes language in such a way that these poems are not merely travelogues, but, rather, metaphors for travel as a way of being, of extending our experience about what it is to be alive in this place, this time: “We, too, have come to these silent shores,/ immigrants from the world of language" (“In Unknown Tongues"). As Americans, we are all immigrants of one sort or another, but Fishman is also talking about how, sometimes, we need to be wordless, to speak the language of the body, and how sometimes we need to be away, in order to come back home.
And so concludes our journey to the Country of Memory. The threads of this history--childhood, family, travel--have been woven around us: “[this] hand,/ resting on the open page of memory, stitches us together,/ thread by aching thread" (“A Guide at the Synagogue of Rome"). Throughout the book, Fishman entreats us to wake up, to pay attention: “Press firmly on this green earth/ this sea of life you tread on./ Something will spring alive in you/ and root down" (“A Field in Virginia"). These poems, rooted in dirt, are written in blood and fire: “each second of your life, something is smoldering" (“East of the Hudson").
While I was writing this review, I came across a quote by Jim Daniels, that you should write with “your heart open, open to it all," and Fishman does, he does indeed. In his poem, “At the Edge," he closes with “What are we here for/ if not to know beauty," and in bringing us along on his journey, we, too, leave with our hearts fully open, singing.
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