To 'In-Breathe' in Wonder

by Dave Seter

What We Were Born For, Emilie Lygren, Blue Light Press, San Francisco, 2021, 58 pages, $15.95 paperback, winner of the Blue Light Book Award www.bluelightpress.com.

ALL THINGS COME TO THOSE who wait, an old proverb states. Of Emilie Lygren's debut collection, What We Were Born For, Naomi Shihab Nye writes: "This is the book I have been waiting for. For years." If we had to wait for these poems, it's because they speak to our changing world. They represent a younger generation's response to changing cultural norms. Lygren sees our complex society through a new lens, one adjusted to this emerging worldview. Heart on her sleeve, she tattoos what she sees onto the page, indelible, hard to forget even when the reader places the book aside.

We are part of nature, these poems seem to say, as they immerse the reader, boots on the ground, in Lygren's world of outdoor education. The poems are steeped in science but are still accessible. This marks the skill of the successful nature educator at work, walking us through experiences as they emerge on the page. In vivid detail, we see what Lygren sees. Among the indelible images: the emergence of termites from tree stumps into an unfamiliar world "…to row through the air / with the movements of muscles unused" (from "Spring Hatch"); and the abdomen of a bee swelling and contracting "with breath, or blood, or maybe even something more holy" (from "Apid").

And yet these are not exclusively nature poems. A number of the poems deal with human relationships: family, friendship, and the bond between student and teacher. The title of the collection comes from the closing line of the poem "Photograph, Summer 2004." This poem explores a teen girl's response to objectification, referring not only to the objectification of the lens but also to the girl's feeling of having to conform, to smile for the lens:

This is the silent pain of objectification,

the result of telling girls

they are pretty, or need to be,

asking them to smile.

Before long, you start to think you exist for others. …

It is actually not much like living.

At the poem's conclusion, the poet leads a group of young women on a hike up a mountain. Gasping for breath, the hikers are suddenly attuned to the physicality their bodies are capable of, and respond by saying: "This is what we were born for."

"Photograph, Summer 2024" belongs to the first of three sections in the collection, the one titled "Conditioning." This section deals with the process of growing up while exposed to society's expectations of children, especially young girls. Also belonging to this section are Lygren's tributes to her mother and father. "The Photographer," which is about the mother and her photography hobby, is also about the disappearing mode of print photography. The poem concludes with a reflection on the imprint of memory, specifically, the human ability to retain an image of a person despite their absence:

Oh Mom,

The image I remember most is you,

crouched down and holding the camera

your long hair and small smile on the other side of the lens.

"On the Impermanence of Tools," the tribute to the father, begins with the remarkable line: "My dad raised me in a toolbox." The poem continues the metaphor as it explores the father-daughter relationship:

One day when I was inconsolably upset,

I went to my dad for help.

He didn't press me to tell him what was wrong,

he just handed me a trowel, smiled, and said

"Go outside. Dig a hole. You'll feel better."

As the poem ends, the poet laments the day that she will need to once again unearth the soil to undertake the burial ritual for her own father.

The second section of the collection, "Weathering," explores ideas of change and impermanence, beginning with "Ritual," a close-up inspection of leaves in various states of health and decay. This is an uncommon view for the average person, who may look at trees as having leaves all the same, although our surfaces share much in common, with our own skin showing blush and blemish. In this section, the poem "Meditation" stands out as reframing the ecological concept of the interconnectedness of all things through the poet's interaction with a housefly, an insect generally held in low esteem. Lygren calls out the similarity of circumstance of the fly pressing up against a glass wall and the poet pressing up against an invisible wall. Each is unable to see a way out. The idea of fellowship between fly and human being is one many would not admit, but Lygren who, in the poem, shepherds the fly back outdoors, is convincing in her argument:

…maybe I am all parts of the story—

the trembling fly,

the gently cupped hands,

the clear glass window,

the necessary air outside.

The subtlety of Lygren's use of language is evident here. Rather than twisting the arm of the reader, the poet coaxes us to notice the fly's dilemma. We are reminded how necessary air is to all species, not just the hikers in "Photograph, Summer 2004," their "[c]ells screaming for air."

The third and final section of the collection, "Revisioning," contains a number of impactful poems about cultural norms. These poems seem to ask: should we deny our own true nature to conform to society's so-called norms? The poems seem to reply to their own question with a clear no—even asking us to reconsider these cultural norms. The section begins with the poem "Blank is to Blank," a reference to Scholastic Aptitude Testing, or the SAT. The SAT has existed for nearly a century. Taking this battery of tests has been an admission requirement at most universities. In recent years, some universities have concluded that using SAT scores as admission criterion creates a bias toward more privileged applicants. As a consequence, certain universities have made optional, or even entirely dropped, the SAT requirement. Lygren's poem looks at the issue from a creative angle, that certain aspects of the SAT are biased toward pure logic at the expense of imagination. From Lygren's poem:

I dreaded the analogies section

during SAT practice tests in high school.

I failed every question.

…

I could have made an argument for or against every one,

but there was no way

to tell the paper that.

…

The rows of

empty bubbles left my brain

penned in, flattened between boards.

Here is one thing many of us share in common. All who have been subjected to one test or another under duress can surely feel empathy for the poet.

Another poem of Lygren's which takes on cultural norms is "What do you mean nonbinary?" This poem does such an excellent job exploring the concept of gender identity that it should be required reading. Note that the title takes the form of a question, the kind of question an older member of our society unfamiliar with the term might ask a younger member of our society who has grown up using the term. Nonbinary is defined by the Merriam Webster online dictionary as: "relating to or being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is neither entirely male nor entirely female." From the poem:

Sometimes I feel like wearing a dress

and letting my curls fall into neat-messy lines

and sometimes it only feels right to wear t-shirts,

buttoned flannel shirts,

tuck my hair into a soft beige cap.

Yes I am a woman

and I also often feel ungendered.

Not between as in the middle,

or going from one place to another

but between as its own country,

kaleidoscope of color

so much the broader than the polarity

of pastel blue-and-pink baby bonnets.

…

I am not confused.

It is actually quite simple.

Joyful, even.

The more I live into it, the more clear I feel.

The poem goes on to illustrate the embedded nature of gender assumptions, using an anecdote from second grade when Lygren is complimented by a boy for wearing a dress, who remarks it makes her look "nicer." The poet recalls finding the remark funny at the time while acknowledging the potential for such exchanges to be hurtful when unwelcome.

Now we come to the manner in which poetry addresses contemporary events, or the news. Lygren, in her poem "For Michael Wayne Livey," describes an incident that exploded into the news in 2014, then just as quickly fizzled. The poem may be considered part of the documentary poetry, or docupoetry, subgenre in which poets, rather than relying on generalities, dig into the specifics of a current event and use poetic craft to interrogate the event. In her poem, Lygren explores an incident in which the unhoused Livey was transported to a Dallas hospital in an ambulance which had previously transported an Ebola victim. But the ambulance had not been decontaminated prior to transporting Livey, leading to speculation that the unhoused individual would subsequently spread Ebola throughout Dallas:

Once it was clear you weren't sick,

put back out on the streets.

…

Maybe they gave you a juice box

or granola bar for the road—

to where, exactly?

…

You disappeared again.

This time, no one said anything.

The documentary poetry subgenre helps us to contextualize events, and to remember what is forgotten, including the "disappeared" in our society. In the mention of juice boxes and granola bars, we witness the teacher in Lygren expressing sensitivity to the needs of others.

We see this same sensitivity in the poem "For the Students," in which the outdoor educator engages her students in conversation:

Sometimes we sit in circles with these questions:

What are you afraid of?

Who are your heroes and why?

What do you do in your free time that really makes you free?

The answers given by the students range from endearing to heartbreaking. Lygren, while acknowledging the impossibility, expresses a wish to accompany each student home to help fix what is wrong. Suggesting an alternative to simply shrugging our shoulders and leaving our youth to their fate, the poet itemizes a number of small things she feels she can do to help, concluding with these words:

I cannot always change the world they are living into,

but I can change the world we both live in

for the tremor of a moment…

The phrase "tremor of the moment" seems especially descriptive of our nervous era of seemingly endless conflicts which certainly impact our youth.

There are also a number of poems in the final section grouped around the theme of the global pandemic. A number of these poems have a lyrical quality, proving the depth of Lygren's toolbox. One poem especially stands out for its strong use of sound and language:

This was the summer

we ate almost all of the apricots ourselves.

Juice drip on chin and lip,

so many soft, sweet bites.

We picked them and wonder in-breathed

at red blush across tender velvet hemispheres,

skin how I imagine deer muzzles…

I wanted to rub you in apricots.

We unmasked and ate the fruit 10 feet away.

(from "Held")

This poem engages all of the reader's senses, imploring us to "in-breathe" the full wonder of apricots. Many of Lygren's poems are rich with sensory detail, which is fitting for an outdoor educator so readily attuned to nature, including human nature. Lygren even seems attuned to her sixth sense, an intuitive sense which, if it can be said to include empathy, is richly present in her poems. Generously, the final section of the book ends with an ode to elders and the need for connection between the generations. In the poem, "For the grandmother teaching children how to plant seeds in the community garden," the poet observes, "We can spend a day like this, or a life."

The proverb-like quality of Lygren's invocation—we can spend a day like this, or a life—brings us back full circle to our opening proverb—all things come to those who wait. How fitting that the latter proverb's origin is attributed to a poem ("Tout vient à qui sait attendre") by Mary Montgomerie Currie, who wrote under the pseudonym Violet Fane (1843-1905). Currie/Fain was an illustrator as well as a poet and novelist. As if to further prove the interconnectedness of all things, Lygren herself combines the craft of drawing with the craft of writing in her nature journaling practice. On the facing page of the final poem, about planting seeds, in What We Were Born For, we find one of Lygren's sketches, of a seed pod. Here we should note that Lygren is co-author, along with John Muir Laws, of the book How to Teach Nature Journaling (Heyday Books, 2020).

Reflecting on Naomi Shihab Nye's observation that these are the poems she's been waiting for, I picture myself standing by the side of a river waiting—for something—but for what? For the river to change? For the river to change me? As I take Lyrgen's advice, and in-breathe in wonder, something jumps to mind, an aphorism attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus that states one can never step into the same river twice. The simple interpretation is that the river is never the same because the water it carries is constantly moving on, with new water taking its place. Stated another way, the river is made up of different water every time we step into it. There is a secondary interpretation, that the person who steps into the river is not the same person each time they step into the river. Because, they too, are constantly changing. In the simplest biological sense, we are constantly eliminating dead cells and growing new ones. But also, in an intellectual sense, our selves are changing. And our selves need to change, Lygren's poems seem to say, in brotherhood and sisterhood, yes, but also in a nonbinary personhood, that allies us in giving each other space to grow. Dear reader, please join me in jumping in to this river called poetry. In the words of Emile Lygren—we can spend a day like this, or a life.

Dave Seter has just been named Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2024-2026. His poetry collections are Don't Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections) and Night Duty (Main Street Rag). Educated as a civil engineer, he writes about social and environmental issues. He is also an emerging translator of contemporary Lithuanian poetry. His writings have appeared in Cider Press Review, The Florida Review, The Hopper, The Museum of Americana, Poetry Northwest (forthcoming), and elsewhere. His poems have received the KNOCK Ecolit Prize, won third place in the William Matthews competition, and received honorable mention in Paterson Literary Review's Allen Ginsberg competition. He serves on the organizing committee for the Petaluma Poetry Walk.

— posted July 2024