Plainsight

by Justin Runge

At once documentary in its plain-spoken observations and attuned to the romance of place, this chapbook buzzes with people laboring, cowering ranch houses, food courts and "failed utopias." A history and projective future of the Plains, Runge's poems vibrate with particulars and possibilities. --Megan Kaminski Justin Runge's staccato travel narrative migrates across Nebraska, marking its stations, east to west, by way of mile and exit numbers on Interstate 80, the ghosted path of the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails. Disembodied in its vehicle, the thinking eye of these poems passes through the placed and put structures in the ether of the lost prairie as if passing the way stations on the road to Compostela, or Basho's narrow road north. At once a feature article and catchall, an elegy and an invitation to new vision, PLAINSIGHT reports and collects, laments and "Everything / is crushed / by this sky, / as if a vise / grip forms / from the ground / and it. Dark / mouth. Posts / but no lights." Here the world is recognized by one of its own. "As Roman / decay was / built in," Runge builds in subtle insight, deftly "Two functions / departure / and effluvia." --Peter Streckfus

Genres: Poetry

56 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2012

About the author

Justin Runge is the author of Plainsight (New Michigan Press, 2012) and Hum Decode (Greying Ghost Press, 2014). His criticism has been featured by Black Warrior Review and Pleiades, and his poetry has been published in Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, DIAGRAM, and other journals.

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think I’ve encountered another chapbook that marries form and topic so artfully, like a long concrete poem broken into parts. My first impression was that the tall, skinny poems were columnar, like sky scrapers, but I soon caught on that they’re to be viewed flat like Interstate 80 on your GPS. The white of the page is the seemingly endless plains of Nebraska. I also wondered why the poems are numbered, rather than titled, and not arranged in numerical order. Fortunately, a blurb on the back explains that the numbers are the mile markers on that road. The width of a line is approximately 7-18 characters/ 1-3 words. This means we readers clip along at highway speed:

“At sixty-five
MPH, a town
is ten seconds.”

If you’re like me, you’ll back up and reread some of your favorite metaphors to enjoy the ride all the more. This same poem, “126,” ends,

“Propane tanks
slender as war-
heads sit next
to corrugated
steel everything.”

[J.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Runge's New Michigan Press poetic chapbook is stuffed with some of the most beautiful metaphors and personifications I've read in quite awhile, and his use of enjambment is pretty profound. This book alone is worth the price of admission to the 2012 Diagram chapbook series.

[Matthew Porubsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is beautifully designed and the cover is just fantastic. Runge's work is adventurous in line breaks and content. These contemporary nature poems have potent images that slip through, between and alongside one another to create a wonderful flow. Such a nice, tight book.