Quickening Fields

by Pattiann Rogers

Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry

A new collection by an award-winning poet who "presents her apprehensions of the natural world with striking accuracy and emotional impact" (Orion Magazine)

Denise Levertov has called Pattiann Rogers a "visionary of reality, perceiving the material world with such intensity of response that impulse, intention, meaning, interconnections beyond the skin of appearance are revealed." Quickening Fields gathers fifty-three poems that focus on the wide variety of life forms present on earth and their unceasing zeal to exist, their constant "push against the beyond" and the human experience among these lives. Whether a glassy filament of flying insect, a spiny spider crab, a swath of switch grass, barking short-eared owls, screeching coyotes, or racing rat-tailed sperm, all are testifying to their complete devotion to being. Many of the poems also address celestial phenomena, the vision of the earth immersed in a dynamic cosmic milieu and the effects of this vision on the human spirit. While primarily lyrical and celebratory in tone, these poems acknowledge, as well, the terror, suffering, and unpredictability of the human condition.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 6, 2017

Reviews

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am grateful to have won an advance reader copy in a Goodreads Giveaway. Because it's an ARC and I enjoyed reading the book so much, I intend to hold on to my copy.

This poetry ignites the sense and reads in a way that is not complicated, an adult reader can understand the language. The beautiful descriptions of nature create such a relatable collection and help the reader to see the natural world in a much more artistic light. These poems are pure elegance! I highly recommend this collection to any nature, art, and/or poetry lover!

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so surprised that I have never heard of this poet; her focus seems to be the natural world, and nearly every poem spoke to me in some way. She has a way with description that is universal, inclusive, and so vivid and apt, I felt myself present in her poems, as if she was describing something I know and see well, as if I looked up from my walk and there she was and her poems. Her poems are barely collected on the internet, so seems to live in some obscurity which is a shame. I was slightly disappointed that there was not more passion or enlightenment or emotion to them, the way Mary Oliver does it, but it makes sense that only Mary Oliver can do that. These are slow, thoughtful poems that require thought from the reader, savoring, percolation through your days, and I think will yield more and more as you read them. Perfect introduction to an unsung poet and I am inspired to read more...


The Congregating of Stars

They often meet in mountain lakes,
No matter how remote, no matter how deep
Down and far they must stream to arrive,
Navigating between the steep, vertical piles
Of broken limestone and chert, through shattered
Trees and dry bushes bent low by winter,
Across ravines cut by roaring avalanches
Of boulders and ripping ice.

Silently, the stars have assembled
On the surface of this lost lake tonight,
Arranged themselves to match the patterns
They maintain in the highest spheres
Of the surrounding sky.

And they continue on, passing through
The smooth, black countenance of the lake,
Through that mirror of themselves, down through
The icy waters to touch the perfect bottom
Stillness of the invisible life and death existing
In the nether of those depths.

Sky-bound- yet touching every needle
In the torn and sturdy forest, every stone,
Sharp, cracked along the ragged shore- the stars
Appear the same as in ancient human ages
On the currents of the old seas and the darkened
Trails of desert dunes, Orion’s belt the same
As it shone in Galileo’s eyes, Polaris certain above
The sails of every mariner’s voyage. An echoing
Light from the Magi’s star, that bacon, might even
Be shining on this lake tonight, unrecognized.

The stars are congregating, perhaps
in celebration, passing through their own
names and legends, through fogs, airs,
and thunders, the vapors of winter frost
and summer pollens. They are ancestors
of transfiguration, intimate with all the eyes
of the night. What can they know?

The Estate of Solemnity

By right, it reigns in its places- in long beards
Of spanish moss hanging from a live oak
On a windless evening, and in the chill of new
Icicles rigidly, imperceptibly lengthening. Cavern
Stalagmites are almost majestic with solemnity.

The black morel and the tree ear mushroom
Are solemn without grief, solemn without joy,
Solemn without reverence, without a single
Flicker of green or lift of a wing or cry.

But the most solemn, most stalwart, the least
Wavering are the tors and crags, the towering desert
Spires and carved pinnacles, the devoted ascents
And sharp, raw rims of boulders and bluffs, the maw
Of a distant cave I saw yesterday and the day before,
And the grave echo there of the day and the before.

Mystics and divines have always sought the pure,
White-rock serenity of the silent, solemn moon
Bound in its flight alone far above the peaks, far
Above the earth, surrounded there forever by bevies
Of giddy stars, all asparkling, all aglow.


Grand Sky/Grand Prairie

Both harbor the vastness of space. One holds the space
Of starlight, thunder snow, rock and icy comets, scrolls
Of clouds; the other the spaces inside see heart and ovum,
Root webs, spider webs, budded blossoms.

They lean together tightly day and night, pressing
One into the other, each creating the horizon of the other.
They exchange themselves. At evening one becomes
The steady night in which the other lives. Yet witness
How the moon first rises from the body of the prairie
Into the height of the sky that then possesses it.
Their horizons are persistent illusion.


Harvest Tale
One night between the black sky and the golden
Land (thrice golden at evening- wheat fields
With their wind-waves of coppper grasses and blades,
Spinning reapers and threshers, and bronze boys
Bold with light); one night between the black

Furrows of his body and the gold of his hands,
We were curled tight around each other as if inside
The black spiral of a fossil conch harboring its own
Ocean pulse, the same surge and sea-rolling motion
Flowing through the fields in the black swirl of the sky;

Like stars our bodies were multiple against a black
Sky in that full harvest, each a repose, each an urgency.




Seeing the God statement

Supposes the statement Blessed
Are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God were placed like a wreath of violets,
Lilies, laurel, and olive, blossoms strung together
Like words in a sentence, a garland
Launched, set out on a flowing creek

Imagine that wreath carried
Down the frothy rapids, tossed, floating
Slipping over water-smooth, moss-colored
Boulders, in and out of slow, dark pools,
Through poplar and willow shadows. It dips,
Sinks momentarily, emerges, travels, maitains
Its ring, its declaration and syntax.

At times it widens in a broad, deep
Current, makes sense as a gift.
The pure becomes inclusive, spatial,
Generous. God and heart are two
Spread wings of one open reading.

And at times it narrows, restricts.
Violets and heart entangle
With God. The blessed braces,
Overlaps lilies and laurel.

Still, at any point you might
reach down yourself, catch that ring
of blossoms, lift it up, wear
its beauty and blooming distinction
across your forehead. Look into a mirror.
See what you can see.

The Highest Octaves of Light

Sands, in wild winds of surging waves
Over the desert dunes, sing with the tones
Of tiny pebbles moving all together, a shifting
Of dust grains humming and moaning
Over the growing and diminishing dunes.

His body in the mirror is the color
Of sands. The song he sings in the voice
Of light shining like waves of wind
Passing over his body inside the glass.

The mirror sings with the color of sand
In the highest octaves of light.

Have you ever listened to sands sing
With gold light as they fall in threads
Through the needle-eye opening
At the center of a hour-glass globe?

Why not arrange such globes in rows
Before a window of sun, each globe
A different width, a different height
Of refined or rudimentary glass, clear
Amber rose, a tinted blue of noon sky,
And listen to the chorus?

And then why not turn the globes
Upside down and over again to hear
Sands sing one more time?

The desert dunes are singing, wind-risen
Voices from a primeval earth, haunting,
Pacific, pining and irate. we listen
For the repeating message we remember.
The songs are only tumbling pebble grains;
Their words are only notes of swirling dust,
Sings the eternal light, Emanuel.

The Five-Dog Saga

When God loosens their leashes and lets them go,
They race through the underbrush pf the forest, they romp
The meadow, cavort in the river, this is their ritual of worship.
When they have wings, they are bird dogs.
When they are bird dogs, and fly in the heavens,
They are angels hunting the night with Orion.

Afterward, like the earth-covered dogs they are,
Like the holy dogs they are, like the anointed
Pilgrims they are, each one always comes back
To the word, to the whistle, to the touch of the hand.
Each always comes home.


Calling to Measure

It’s an obsession now, this matching
And measuring, comparing, for instance,
The coral-violet of the inner lip
Of a queen conch to the last rim of dusk
On the purple-flowering raspberry
To the pure indigo of the bird-voiced
Tree frog’s twittering tongue, then converting
The result to an accepted standard
Of rose-scarlet gradations.

It’s difficult to say which is greater-
The brevity of the elk’s frosty bellow
Or the moments of fog sun-lifted
Through fragrances of blue spruce
Or the fading flavor in one spoonful
Of warm chocolate rum.

I mark out space by ten peas
Strung on a string. The pane perimeter
Of my window, for instance, is wenty-eight
Lengths, twelve lenths over.
Seventy pea-strings stretch from bed
To door, Four go round my neck.

My longing for you is more painful
Than the six-times folding, doubling
And doubling, of a coyote’s
Most piercing cry, more inconsolable
Than a whole night of moonlight blinded
By thunderclouds, more constant
Than black at the center of a cavern
Stone below leagues of granite.

I gauge my cold by the depth
Of stillness in the pod heart of a frozen
Wren. I time my breath by the faltering
Leaves of aspen in wind. I count the circles
Of my dizziness by the spreading rings
Of rain-lassos on the pond, by the repeating
Bell chimes of the corridor clock,
By the one unending ring of the horizon.

Where is the tablet, where the rule, where
The steel weights, the balance, the book,
Properly to make measure of a loss


So grand and deep I can spread and stitch it
To every visible star I name- Arcturus,
Spica, Vega, Regulus- in this dark
Surrounding dark surrounding dark?


Statement Preliminary to the Invention of Solace

Whether they bend as complaintely as black leaves
Curved and hagning in the heavy dew in the grey dawn,
Or whether they wait as motionless as ice-coated
Insects and spears of roots on a northern cliff;

Whether they tighten once like the last white edge
Of primrose taken suddenly skyward
By a gust of frost, or swallow as hard as stones
Careened and scattered by a current of river;

Whether they mourn by the bright light of grief
Running like a spine of grass straight through the sound
Of their songs, or whether they fall quietly
Through indefinite darkness like a seed of sorrel
Bound alive beneath snow;

whether they mourn in multitudes, blessed
like a congregation of winter forest moaning for the white
drifting children of storms they can never remember,
or whether they grieve separately, divided
even from themselves, parted like golden plovers blown
and calling over a buffeted sea;

something must come to them, something as clear and fair
and continuous as the eye of the bluegill open in calm water,
something as silent as the essential spaces of breath
heard inside the voice naming all of their wishes,

something touching them in the same way the sun deep
in the pit of the pear touches the spring sky by the light
of its own leaf. A comfort understood like that
must be present now and possible.



TAKING LEAVE
Of the unhindered motion in the million
swirled and twisted grooves of the juniper
driftwood lying in the sand; taking leave
of each sapphire and amber thread
and each iridescent bead of the swallowtail's
wing and of the quick and clever needle
of the seamstress in the dark cocoon
that accomplished the stitching.

Goodbye to the long pale hairs
of the swaying grassflowers, so like, in grace
and color and bearing, the nodding
antennae of the green valley grasshopper
clinging to its blade; and to the staircase
shell of the butter-colored wendletrap
and to the branches of the sourwood
making their own staircase with each step
upward they take and to the spiraling
of the cobweb weaver twirling
as it descends on its silk
out of the shadows of the pitch pine.

Taking leave of the sea
of spring, that grey-green swell
slowly rising, spreading, its heavy
wisteria-scented surf filled
with darting, gliding, whistling
fish, a current of cries, an undertow
of moans and buzzes, so pervasive
and penetrating and alluring
that the lungs adapt
to the density.

Determined not to slight the knotted
rockweed or the beach plum or the white,
blue-tipped petals of the five spot;
determined not to overlook the pursed
orange mouth of each maple leaf
just appearing or the entire chorus
of those open leaves in full summer forte.

My whole life, a parting
from the brazen coyote thistle and the reticent,
tooth-ridged toad crab and the proud,
preposterous sage grouse.

And you musn't believe that the cessation
which occurs here now is more
than illusory; the ritual
of this leave-taking continues
beyond these lines, in a whisper
beside the window, below my breath
by the river, without noise
through the clearing at midnight,
even in the dark, even in sleep,
continues, out-of-notice,
private, incessant.

Death Vision:
I think it’s a multiplication of sight,
Like after a low hovering autumn rain
When the invisible web of funnel weaves
And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen
Where they always were, spread and looping
The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf-
Crest elucidated with water-light and frost,
completing the fullest aspect of field.

Or maybe the grace of death is split-second
Transformation of knowledge, an intricate,
Turning realization, as when a single
Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms,
In an instant, from stasis to replicating,
Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches,
Alters its plane of intentions, becomes
A hoofing, thumping host of purpose.


I can imagine not merely
The falling away of blank walls
And blinds in that moment, not merely
A shutter flung open for the first time
Above a valley of interlocking forests
And constellations but a sweeping,
Penetrating circumference of vision
Encompassing both knotweed bud
And its seed simultaneously, seeing
Blood bone and its ash as one,
The repeated light and fall and flight
Of hawk-owl and tundra vole
As a union of origin and finality.

A mathematics of flesh and space might
Take hold if we ask for it in that last
Moment, might appear as if it had always
Existed within the eyes, translucent,
Jewel-like in stained glass patterns
Of globes and measures, equations,
Made evident by a revelation of galaxies
In the knees, spine, fingers, all
The ceasings, all the deaths within deaths
That compose the body becoming at once
Their own symbolic perception and praise
Of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings,
Strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills;
This one expression breaking, this same
Expression healing.

[Keely · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re very lucky, you have that person in your life who can name all the flowers. Walking through a garden together, they casually toss off names—petunia, impatiens, gladiolus, cone flower, bee balm, etc., etc.—no signage needed, because that knowledge is simply a part of them. For me, that person is my mom. Pattiann Rogers must surely be that person for someone, too, only she knows, not just the names of flowers, but their parts and inner workings. And not just of flowers, but of all flora and fauna, through all seasons. And not just their names, parts, and inner workings, but also the words for the chords they strike within us.

Quickening Fields is an extended exercise in that naming, knowing, and putting words to. At times it’s like reading the poetry of a particularly thoughtful and emotive field biologist. At all times, her work is utterly fascinating. I must admit, there were some poems in this collection that were a bit too dense or intricately wrought for me. I couldn’t quite connect. But anytime I felt like giving up, another poem would reach out and grab me.

As in her previous poetry collection that I’ve read, Holy Heathen Rhapsody, Rogers utilizes an incrementally building structure in many of her poems. She keeps layering and layering into her theme, adding tension, until you think the thing won’t hold any longer. Then she resolves it with a flourish in the final stanza. “Finding the Cat in a Spring Field at Midnight” (21) and “Statement Preliminary to the Invention of Solace” are a few memorable examples of this approach. It’s very cool.

My other favorites from this collection include the spring poem “Forth Into View, Random Warriors” (19), “Noonday and a Deep Idea of Yellow” (22), the startling “Grandmother’s Sister” (59), “The Moss Method” (62), and “Playroom: The Visionaries” (83), which is, hands down, the best poem I’ve ever read about stick horses.

Rogers is a marvel of a poet!

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of poems by Pattiann Rogers, who has the remarkable ability to write lush language that is also precise an clear. If it has a theme, this collection speaks to the unity of all being and indeed the unity of all things, animate and inanimate, and of all things with the voice of the poet.

I don't know how the wood thrush knows
how to match the pitch and fall of its cry
exactly to the pitch and fall the mountain ridge
makes against the evening sky....

Each round lobe of the three-leafed clover
fist perfectly into each green note
of the tree frog's treble,and each tree frog
swells its tremolo in cylindrical bunches
of three-tones rings....

What is it that I imitate? to what structure
do I meld? my stance, my cry and mumble
fitting exactly into the chinks
and snugness of some other? What is it
that makes its own body, that finds the steps
of its own motion against the outline
of my voice?

The collection ends with the poet imagining her own "Death Vision," something that we hope is not near even as Rogers begins her 8th decade. But even that is a vision of enfolding back into the unity in a new kind of being:

... all the deaths within deaths
that compose the body becoming as once
their own symbolic perception and praise
of river salt, blooms and breaths, strings,
strains, sun-seas of gravels and gills;
this one expression breaking, this same
expression healing.

These poems, written between 1980 and 2016, show the poet still speaking with sublime voice and vision. Read, sense, be.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book of poems! I often find myself setting the book aside to savor a phrase or idea. Over and over again, Rogers "beholds"natural systems in ways that I sense my own identity enlarging to include animals or weather systems or the sound of wind in grass. I am impressed with the scope of her vibrant imaginative intelligence.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, I guess lyric poetry. Spiritual and earth bound loveliness. Birds, bugs, flowers, trees, climatology, weather, conception, birth, and death and stars and water. I read it once but will read it twice, thrice…because I know I will see more and more every reading.

[Alyson Indrunas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read poem by poem almost everyday. Love the painting on the cover. Those clouds!

Favorite line:
"Hasn't the river poplar learned so well to mold itself to that blowing branch-shaped vacancy existing inside a flickering summer by the bank?"

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 2 of the sealey challenge.

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this; it's another great collection of philosophical nature poetry. It's not Holy Heathen Rhapsody, but it's very good.

[Jess B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection that opened my heart and mind back into reading poetry again. Each piece can transport you back into a time in your life - heartbreak, lust, strength, surrender - a journal of self reflection written by someone else. 4.5