What I'm Reading: Flight of August by Lawrence Eby

84º ~ still dodging the worst heat and humidity of our normal summers, no rain chances for a week, may need to water at some point


Truth be told, I read Flight of August by Lawrence Eby months ago. It was the winner of the 2013 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and I picked up a copy at AWP. I didn't post a reading response of the book when I first read it because The Alchemy of My Mortal Form was still sitting in the submission pile at Trio House for the 2014 Louise Bogan Award. I don't know if it was superstition that prevented me from posting or if I didn't want to seem like I was currying favor, but today, I re-read the book and was just as drawn to it as on my first read.

Like Traci Brimhall's Our Lady of the Ruins, Eby's book is post-apocalyptic, and features characters trying to make their way in a desolate landscape. It's not a surprise, then, that one of the blurbs for Flight of August comes from Brimhall herself. In Eby's case, the landscape is frozen in "ever-winter," perhaps as a result of global climate change. Certainly, the setting of these poems is one of snow, ice, and a harsh wind. The land itself is inhospitable, the mood one of being on the precipice of a true doomsday.

In Flight of August, the most recurring persona is a young man being shown the way of this harsh reality by his father. Other voices pop up now and then, but these two men remain the focus. Each poem is numbered rather than titled, and the book unfolds as a wandering narrative. I imagine one could read the poems in random order, but I don't think it would be as fulfilling an experience.

There is a sense of panic barely controlled in many of these poems, and their forms bear this out. The poems are short, make use of indents and tabs, repeat brief phrases right on top of each other, and deftly balance enjambed lines with end-stopped to keep the reader's momentum tumbling forward.

For example, here's the opening of "#1."

We scout.

The pelt line is empty
           swaying hard to the ever-winter
           wind. The cold cold
nails jutting from collapsed
shanties, sheets hung
from a rebar post ...


In "#29," the first two stanzas are left-aligned, and then the remaining stanzas are all indented one inch. Here's a brief moment.

             ...

             the stag            horned-
             devil                tracks our

             need to live and die.

In "#45," all hope appears to be lost as "The earth is tired // of its rotation. The sun / is sore from long years // of weight." All this is pressed upon "These globed children and their / demands." The plural speaker, eventually declares "We are // beyond a repairman's callused / work, his touch."  However, there are a few poems left after this one, and I'll let you, Dear Reader, discover Eby's concluding pronouncements on your own.