Ride That Damn River Down
Poem Review: “Lamentation With The Detroit River” by Julia B. Levine
Julia B. Levine’s poem “Lamentation With The Detroit River” catches you in its current and sweeps you towards its conclusion: you cannot choose the reality you’ve been born into.
Even then I got it —
his shock that the hook
had caught a grenade of turgid flesh.
It’s like the punchline of what is real
next to what you thought could be.
It’s a quick poem driven by four images. The first image we see is the green river she and her sister poke sticks into, distinctly aware that something has been stolen from it. Next, we see the ragged man swinging a huge fish from the river’s source at night; she’s just as shocked as he is that there was life after all in that green slag syrup. Then we see the parasol of smoke rising above her grandfather in her mother’s childhood apartment. We smell its cherry stink. Finally, we peek at the Yiddish newspaper with her mother. We see the “white bonfire of bones, a drift of skulls heaped together.” It’s the Holocaust we’re looking at.
It’s the Holocaust
before it has a name,
and the mark a moment makes,
the sinker of consequence cast,
the dead weight at the end of any line.
What does the Holocaust have to do with the fish in the river? What does the river have to do with the Auto Industry in Detroit? What does the Auto Industry have to do with the homeless people shuffling along the Detroit River? What does the Detroit River have to do with the narrator? Levine answers these questions effortlessly, dragging us through the poem as if caught in a riptide, allowing us a few big, gasping realizations before we submerge again in its imagery.
Check out the poem at the link below, then come back here and let me know what you think. It’s an impressive piece of work. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Link: http://www.gemini-magazine.com/levinelamentationdetroitriver.html
