I've been waiting for
Temper since 2001, when I graduated from the Writing Seminars of Johns Hopkins University with
Beth Bachmann (along with Alex Long and Dan Groves and several other great poets), and now that it has won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, at last I get to read it in trade book form (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press).
A book of discrete, short lyrics that tell, or rather imply, the story of a murdered sister, and the father's possible involvement. The poems function as pieces of the story, and pieces of the psyche of the teller, accumulating as the book turns its pages.
The first, title poem, "Temper":
Some things are damned to erupt like wildfire,
windblown, like wild lupine, like wings, one after
another leaving the stone-hole in the greenhouse glass.
Peak bloom, a brood of blue before the firebrand.
And though, it is late in the season, the bathers, also,
obey. One after another, they breathe in and butterfly
the surface: mimic white, harvester, spot-celled sister,
fed by the spring, the water beneath is cold.
Ms. Bachmann's musical gifts are evident. Take for example, "windblown, like wild lupine," where the second picks up three distinct sounds from the first, the "wi," the "l," the "n." Her choice of "temper" is a smart one: the definition we most often think of, that of losing one's temper, which can lead to violence, but also to make tougher, or more balanced, as one who has gone through some great hardship will hopefully receive as an outcome. And we are introduced, without fully knowing it, to the sister, with one of the butterfly choices in the list.
The poems aren't always directly about the narrative at hand, though they do contribute to the atmosphere of the story. "A New Way of Thinking About Space" is an ekphrastic a crucifix of Giotto's.
In Giotto's cross we see for the first time
the weight of the body
pulling against the wood.
This is the moment after the accusation
of the father, when
the effects of gravity
take over. It's a break with the past,
a refusal to stylize
the holy, a rupturing
of the plane.
Religious imagery stipples Temper, as the narrator struggles with the difficult questions of a sister killed and the life we have left to live in this fallen world.
This is a beautiful debut—one I hope receives the attention it deserves.
