Bright Raft in the Afterweather: Poems (Volume 82)

by Jennifer Elise Foerster

In her dazzling new book, Jennifer Elise Foerster announces a frightening new truth: “the continent is dismantling.” Bright Raft in the Afterweather travels the spheres of the past, present, future, and eternal time, exploring the fault lines that signal the break of humanity’s consciousness from the earth.

Featuring recurring characters, settings, and motifs from her previous book, Leaving Tulsa, Foerster takes the reader on a solitary journey to the edges of the continents of mind and time to discover what makes us human. Along the way, the author surveys the intersection between natural landscapes and the urban world, baring parallels to the conflicts between Native American peoples and Western colonizers, and considering how imagination and representation can both destroy and remake our worlds.

Foerster’s captivating language and evocative imagery immerse the reader in a narrative of disorientation and reintegration. Each poem blends Foerster’s refined use of language with a mythic and environmental lyricism as she explores themes of destruction, spirituality, loss, and remembrance.

In a world wrought with ecological imbalance and grief, Foerster shows how from the devastated land of our alienation there is potential to reconnect to our origins and redefine the terms by which we inhabit humanity and the earth.

Genres: Poetry, Indigenous

88 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2018

Reviews

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant and beautiful collection of poetry. This is my first time reading Foerster's work and I am so thrilled to have discovered this poet. The poems in this collection are written with a blend of the ethereal with the familiar which effectively causes readers to challenge their present reality. The poems in this book all contain lovely imagery, and expert use of motifs. Every word feels deliberately chosen and serves a purpose; there is no waste here. Foerster's work is of the kind that compels you to revisit it before you've end reached the conclusion of a poem for the first time. I know I will be enjoying rereading this book multiple times for years to come and will be alert to any new work she releases.

[Jessica]

“This continent is a memory / remapped each morning— / seashells washed upon the beach, / each breathing a naming of you.”

—“Lost Coast”

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

My overall reaction to this collection was disappointment. After reading Foerster's inventive and inspiring contributions to the "Native Voices" anthology, I was expecting more, an expansion, not a pulling back. In the commentary section of that book she even said she was working on continuing her "explorations".

But I didn't see any in these poems. Her bio inside this book said she's currently working on her PhD. Has the conformity of university writing programs discouraged her from going against the current "acceptable" trends? What happened to the creative energy, the experimentation with repetition and rhyme, that was so urgent and exciting in Foerster's poems in the Tupelo anthology?

Not that these are "bad" poems--I liked the final section a lot. But it seems to me that much of her former willingness to try different things has been edited out. I did not understand the strange layered layouts either, which only distracted me from what was written. It often seemed Foerster was forcing images by purposefully inserting unfamiliar words, too, as if trying very hard to impress--her advisor? or at any rate someone else's idea of Poetry, what she thinks Important Poetry Journals are looking for--instead of taking chances that might result in rejections.

Still, Foerster is a voice worth reading. The last section, "The Outer Bank", particularly, contains some haunting and distilled images.

"The city is a ship in a bottle.
Streets glitter, crack."

"I weave the clouds from birds
passing over: yesterday
black birds. Today, blue."

Simple words, ordinary language--creating magic.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Bright Raft in the Afterweather, gorgeous poetry re-shapes and re-defines endtimes in a geography all its own. Under the sense of imminent (maybe necessary?) upheaval run a longstanding sense of disconnection and the search to re-connect and reclaim. And through it all steps a mythic female figure like a guiding star or a red thread, like hope, like a future:

"I have buried my song in the valley.

Left my hair,
knotted wreaths
for birds to comb from the ledge.

"Old woman, immortal bird
perched in your silent, forever-green glade
will you weave me a nest,
lay me down in the shade?"

I have slipped through the cracks
of the clock hands
peeled the bark from my throat.

(a section in Nightingale)

[Ashly Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection explores a variety of depths from the space between stars in the sky to the space between life in the ocean. Forester creates beautiful images in very few words throughout these pieces. Reading this collection aloud highlights the musicality of Foerster’s mastery. I resonated more with some pieces than others, but all of them have a surreal, deeply beautiful quality that I couldn’t get enough of!

[As3 Na70 · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful, even ineffable collection this book is! Reading and feeling the poems have made me realized how little I know about plants, on the land or in any body of water. The poet truly knows her ways in delivering the sensations and the depth (or height) of the locations and timings for each poem. The emotions and/or feelings invoked and evoked within my immersion into the pieces vary, from grief, fright, joy, to hopeful.

[Lisa Stice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful collection of lyrical poetry. The images are both grounded in the real and the present while still holding a surreal element. As I read, I felt a sense of urgency/immediacy, a call to action.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4