Review of Go to the Pine: Quoddy Journals 2005-2010 by Mark Pawlak

Mark Pawlek charts the spectacular shoreline and headlands of Maine’s Passamaquoddy Bay in this book of adept poetic notations. Between 2005 and 2010 Pawlec and his family rented a house overlooking the bay in Lubec, the easternmost town in the United States. According to Pawlek, who I listened to recently giving a poetry reading at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge Massachusetts, he, as an early riser, literally witnessed many sun risings before any of his countrymen. In fact images of an Atlantic dawn figure prominently throughout his journals. How appropriate! The American Indian word Passamaquoddy means people of the dawn.

One of Pawlek’s influences is seventeenth century Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho, himself a keeper of a famous journal published posthumously. Pawlek’s title comes from Basho, whom he quotes to begin his journal,

 

Go to the pine if you want to learn about pine.

 

Although Pawlek sets up his book in a very visual way, many of his pieces are wonderfully lyrical. Take his very first piece entitled “Bold Coast” Partita: Chaconne. The image presented, reminiscent of Pound’s In the Station of the Metro, also exhibits nice subtleties of whispered song. Here’s most of it:

 

rain-damp

pendent blossoms

 

sway

on tall stalks

to foghorn tune,

 

a single droplet

at each tip,

glistening.

 

In a little poem headed by the line 5 AM Sacramental Landscape Pawlak outdoes himself. His imagery sets up a rite of pantheistic adoration that is both visually elaborate and musically well-toned. He says,

 

Now dawn arrives,

startling as the risen Christ

in  Grunewald’s painting, “The Resurrection.”

 

A shimmering golden platter

rests on white muslin

spread across the bay,

 

reflection of the dazzling

eucharistic orb now suspended

an arm’s- length above the horizon.

 

Pawlak returns to the theme of morning light over and over. In another section he records this neat observation,

 

Notice that even pebbles

cast long shadows

in slant morning light.

Observe the bent figures

in waders, raking

the muck for clams

under the supervision

of blue heron.

 

The poet then notes that these observations have the power to utterly change a person. I believe it. It can be life altering to reach a point of understanding, a curious understanding in which a blue heron runs everything.  I see them every day and often consider this. Strange birds!

 

I must say here that I am not the biggest fan of collage poems, but… when they are done well, which means balanced well, they surprise with insight and convert me to their structural cause. The balance that Pawlak achieves in his journals rival what William Carlos Williams achieved in Patterson. Pawlak’s structure is less dense I think—but that is a good thing. For instance he sandwiches a nicely drawn imagistic poem between two seemingly unrelated newspaper clippings. The poem begins this way,

 

Dull pewter morning sky;

oilcloth spread over harbor,

tucked in at shoreline,

set with and peppershaker buoys

beside toy boats painted primary colors;

humped-backed island at harbor’s mouth

in the shape of an overturned ladle.

 

The lead- in clipping from the Bangor Daily News reports,

 

“The Brady Gang came to Maine in the fall of 1937 for the same reason 21^st century criminals venture north of Boston—seafood, foliage, and guns.”  

 

The other bookend clipping details a list of District Court cases from the same newspaper. It goes like this,

 

…violation of scallop rule, $250.00

…hand fishing sea urchin without license, $500.00

…negotiating worthless instrument, $150.00

… violation of marine worm rule, $250.00

…failing to kindle in a prudent manner, $100.00

 

The resulting atmospherics work terrifically well.

For more of my review go here:

http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2012/11/go-to-pine-by-mark-pawlak.html