Vox Populi
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Dorianne Laux: Spirit Level
“When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off.” –Gary Snyder
My mother was either horizontal on the couch,
or vertical, a plumb line from her spine
to the top of her head to the ceiling that spins
when she drinks, alcohol and an air bubble
trapped, sealed and fixed inside her, her face
carved from wood, a tear gliding slowly
down the curve of her cheek. My mother
was once a spirit in this world. Once
she breathed for me, above me, beside me,
behind me. Now I feel her warm breath
on my neck summer nights, peering
over my shoulder as I write every poem, whispering
Let me in. I let her in. I remember every time
she picked me up or set me down, put me
to bed or woke me from dreams, and now
I see how my whole life has been a dream,
one she built for me from the ground up,
her daughter, my mother the axe, beautiful
tool with which she shaped me, a house
much like the one she lived in, but smaller,
fewer rooms, a tiny unusable attic
and a cluttered basement. I let her in,
like she let me in. She became my carpenter,
stone mason and bricklayer, piling me up
cell by cell, the blade that shaped my legs,
my arms, my surveyor, millwright.
She used herself as a template, her genes
tough, her organs elastic, her eyes and nose,
forehead and mouth. And when her body
from which my body was made
was slipped into the hot retort, I burned
too. She refused the beveled casket,
the oiled mahogany box, last drawer
for the dead, wanted only the fury
of fire, the blue white flames unmaking her
with their licking tongues, house
her grandmother built, and her grandmother
before her, all of them giving what they
had been given, the hardwood floors,
staircases and banisters, their deepest
cupboards, their heavy doors flung wide
so the breeze I would be could blow through.
~~~~
Copyright 2024 Dorianne Laux. From Life on Earth: Poems (Norton, 2024). First published in American Poetry Review. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.
Dorianne Laux‘s many poetry collections include Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
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I can’t say anything more or better than already said by so many who posted here. Dorianne is one of our treasures. So glad we have her voice. She is absolutely among my favorite poets.
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She is wonderful!
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Like Laure-Anne I have loved and taught Dorianne’s poetry for all my years at the University of Northern Colorado. What We Carry is still among my favorite books.
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She is a great poet.
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Tremendous energy and storm of metaphor in Laux’s “Spirit Level” in contrast to Elizabeth Bishop’s distillation. I admire both.
Sonnet
Caught — the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed — the broken
thermometer’s mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
Elizabeth Bishop
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Beautiful! Thanks, Miriam.
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OMG What a. Poet, what a poem. They’ll read Dorianne two hundred years from now and revel in her terms of concision and the beauty of her verse. She never ceases to be riveting—her door opens upon a mineral rich mine where she risks everything everytime she goes down.
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oh. this. what a portrait. such clear seeing.
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yes, the language is clear yet original.
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Her words weaving worlds.
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Yes!
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Pure poetry and a lesson in gratitude.
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yes!
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Dorianne and I were classmates in a poetry class taught by Chana Bloch at Mills College, four decades ago. From listening to the very first brand-new poem she ever read aloud in the classroom, I knew she was a rara avis, and that I was in the presence of a poetry voice that would soar above the rest of us. People often bandy about the term “unique” but the word is exactly right for her work. She never ceases to amaze me. Glad to be stirred by this astonishing poem again.
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Thanks, Annie. Quite a talented group of poets. I worked closely with Chana when I published her books at Autumn House. She was brilliant. It seems so long ago now.
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I’m moved by this poem on many levels. How her Mom is at first depicted as s spirit level in a tool, then expanded to become, for her daughter, all sorts of tools as part of Laux’s makeup. Then Laux describes herself as being shaped by those ancestral tools into a breeze.
An amazing catalogue of objects and female family members, with a breath of fresh air as a conclusion, where the spirit level’s bubble had once floated stationary in its enclosures. What a poetics of life force.
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perfectly said, Jim. Thank you.
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The way Dorianne wields words while shaping (with her magic axe) an extended metaphor mid-flight and always, always manages to land the poem somewhere simply significantly startling, never ceases to blow me clean away. But then, that’s why she’s ever my mainline mama of the page. I know I am not alone.
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“Mainline mama of the page” exactly.
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I have loved and taught Dorianne’s work for more than 35 years. I love her urgent, seamless poems, I love her as a true American poet, she is all heart, authentic, unique, a woman and poet I trust entirely, no artifice, no attitude ever. I still feel shivers when I read/teach some of her poems, so many, that I know almost by heart.
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Accurate praise, Laure-Anne. Thank you!
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Dorianne Laux is one of a kind. Whenever I read her work I feel as if something is happening again, for the first time, and I see and feel it as if for the first time.
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Oh yes!
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I love Dorianne Laux’s mother poem sees the mother’s love but also her shortcomings and her building of the daughter, the mother who is “axe,” “surveyor, “millwright,” and “spirit level,” the enspiritor and the one to keeps the speaker “level” despite the mother’s own spinning. Thank you Dorianne and Michael
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Seeing the mother as the builder of the daughter is a trope that is entirely original, I think. The mother is like a drunken carpenter who manages to complete the house in spite of herself. It is an amazing poem.
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Such a stunning poem, like all of Dorianne Laux’s work. I will be thinking about this poem (and about my mother) all day today. Thank you!
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Dorianne is great, isn’t she?
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