Barrier Island Suite: Poems (Volume 16)

by Kendall Dunkelberg

The poems of Barrier Island Suite are inspired by the life, art, and writings of Walter Inglis Anderson, who spent much of his adult life exploring the barrier islands of Mississippi, sketching and painting their flora and fauna, and chronicling his adventures in numerous logs. The islands form a liminal space between the land and sea, between  nature and culture, between madness and conformity. Elements of the Anderson’s life, including his travels, his struggles with mental illness, and his murals at Oldfields, the Ocean Springs Public School and Community Center, and the cottage at Shearwater Pottery are also incorporated.


from "The Islander"

Painting his subject,
Wen Yü K’o becomes bamboo.
Han Kan turns to horse.
Walter merges with island,
follows pig tunnels through brush.

In flotsam shoes, he
walks on water moccasins
and on copperheads.
Not immune to their venom
he suffers fevered visions.

He’s the young heron
seen climbing a dead pine spar
with feet, wings, and bill,
stretching out to mount a cloud
and take the heavens by storm.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published April 8, 2016

About the author

Kendall Dunkelberg directs the low-residency MFA in creative writing and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium at Mississippi University for Women. His introductory creative writing textbook, A Writer's Craft: Multigenre Creative Writing, was rated as a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers. He has published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures: Poems, as well as Hercules Richelieu and Nostradamus, translations of the Flemish poet Paul Snoek. He has published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, including The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. II: Mississippi, and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology

Reviews

[Terry Everett]

I love this book enough to keep re-reading it. I hope it sells out at AWP.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems of Barrier Island Suite are inspired by the life, art, and writings of the painter and potter Walter Inglis Anderson, who spent much of his life on the barrier islands of Mississippi. Dunkelberg got a copy of “Horn Island Logs of Walter I. Anderson,” and makes this poetry in part out of his reading. That poetry includes elements of Anderson’s life, including his artwork, his struggles with mental illness (documented in “Asylum Roads”), his struggle with being in the world and wanting to live alone on an island. A struggle with madness weaves its way through these poems, though that’s not the focus of them, finally.

“The Cottage” shows Anderson in his workshop: “Here, the wheel of work, decorating Shearwater pots, carving intricate designs, spirals, fish, fowl, suns, and moons, forming grooves in the soft clay where the darker glaze will pool.”

The poems have this presentness about them: “I wanted to see it through his eyes rather than the present reality,” Dunkelberg says. There’s Taoist mysticism in them, and of course the focus is on the cycles of nature, this place, with the language to honor the place and Anderson’s sensibility.

Dunkelberg has music in mind in these poems, arranging them in five movements, in a suite. He includes a bibliography of his references, which is helpful. I had never heard of Dunkelberg or Anderson before reading these poems, and I thank Terry for the nudge to discover them.

“The four edges/ of his sail blow to the four corners of his dream.”

[Christie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot to admire and enjoy about _Barrier Island Suite_, a collection of poems inspired by the life and art of Walter Inglis Anderson.

The poems draw from Anderson's biography, from his personal notes, from his artwork, and from the poet's own imagination.

Overall, an excellent fusion of biography, poetry, and ekphrasis.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received my copy of "Barrier Island Suite" as part of a GoodReads give-away. I also want to make clear that I normally am not a reader of poetry. I was particularly interested in this volume because I love Walter Anderson's work, and because Mr. Dunkelberg is currently director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at my alma mater, Mississippi University for Women.

"Barrier Island Suite" is a collection of poems that were inspired by the life and art of Walter Inglis Anderson. Anderson was a Mississippi artist who spent a great deal of his adult life exploring the barrier islands of Mississippi and, in many ways, becoming a part of them. Anderson struggled with mental illness and discomfort in the work-a-day world; the islands permitted him to escape from the mundane and create exquisite art.

Kendall Dunkelberg has captured a sense of the nature of the barrier islands, but perhaps more importantly, he has exposed something of Anderson's mind, his artistic drives, and his obsession with nature in these poems. The small volume is justly called a suite for it brings to mind a musical composition; in places, I wished I could compose suitable music for the text.

For the most part, the poetry is lyrical, even though there are places where the language seems a little pedestrian. There are a number of intended references to other works (Hemingway's "Islands in the Stream" is one) that are indicated in the notes at the end of the volume, but there were also references that may not have been intentional ("Depending on the kindness of strangers" in "The Road to Shu" quotes Tennessee Williams, for example.) Mr. Dunkelberg kindly includes a bibliography of his references, which may be helpful to a reader who is not familiar with Anderson and his work but is looking for "the story." I had read most of them, and I think it made it easier for me to access the poems.

Given those picky details, I could close my eyes and see Walter Anderson's drawings and watercolors and feel his relationship to nature in some of these poems. "Sea Oats," "The Magic Hours," "Ocean Springs," "Great Spirit Road," and "Horn Island" were favorites. I will read this one again.