We Were the People Who Moved

Poetry. If Elizabeth Bishop's Man- Moth, the city's subterranean searcher, moved to the Midwest, he might shadow the speaker of David Ebenbach's poetry, walking the 'foreign lawn and foliage' of small-town Indiana, where lightning from the 'fathomless sky' strikes down Football Jesus, and where the 'robotic corn' of solar panels soak up the sun's weight. Quick, quirky, and engaging, Ebenbach's urban pastorals discover noisy plagues of cicadas, broken and excavated streets, and a burdened house whose gutters sag like the mouth of someone just 'starting to / understand.' What redemption comes to this 'inevitable place'? What escape? Clamorous passions shatter against 'high white walls'; track lighting shines on 'water damage, social awkwardness, deadlines.' Yet brief hope arrives in the form of a charming, interruptive son and in sudden, improvised prayers, sent from 'the fringes of the universe.' The American anthem 'We the People' echoes strangely through WE WERE THE PEOPLE: a post-modern 'wagons west' of dislocation, brief homesteading, and the threads of regeneration. David Ebenbach, by turns impulsive, funny, astute, and moving, is a great maker. David Gewanter, author of In the Belly, The Sleep of Reason, and War Bird