Writing Highland Echoes: Fall Poetry Series
I sit here across a window from Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks this November as I complete the first leg of in this next poetry collection, Mountains. Mountains follow the eco-theological lenses of Islands and Deserts and map it onto a new landscape. This Mountain-laden series is ambitious yet exciting, especially as the next year or so presents itself with uncertainty but opportunity. I will be taking my studies at Parsons remote, and exploring an audio, photography, and video component to the poetry collection with corresponding coursework. This work is internally timely but externally, I have seen in the fall the ways that cities like Chicago, LA, San Francisco, and possibly New York have become contested sites of power but also particularly unsafe for immigrants to be in. At the end of Mountains, I hope for a return to the cities I have called at times home.
For this series the end of summer came first as I transitioned summer into fall. In this first poem, I used both religious and environmental language to trace my own passage out of the desert and into the mountains. As I moved down Palm Desert Drive in Palm Springs and towards Idyllwyld, leaving the Ace Palm Springs and towards FWB fest in August of this year I focused the poem on the San Jacinto Mountain that stood before me, including the legend of the saint in question sprinkled in with liturgical Latin vocabulary. Then I move towards describing the ecology of the area. Language for me is both prayer and tool and I drew inspiration from the plants of the area to describe what was happening. Local plants like the Chuparosa, Manzanita, and Chamise make appearances and teach us about survival, proving that burning and pruning are not endings but beginnings. These plants have regenerative properties under fire that mirror my own process of release. When I wrote abscission into an accension I’m describing how a shedding can become a rising through a burning. A ritual as scientific as it is alchemical. In September I left California and made my way to New York for the start of the fall semester.
Living in the town of Beacon, NY here it was where I finally got some relief but it’s true what they say- it’s worse before it gets better. Taking the local transit up and down into the city, I used a bit of Spanish here, “momentáneamente” meaning temporarily, and “ deshebrandome de mi mismo” meaning separating myself from myself. In these moments, I felt like if I could just disappear I would get some relief, but there was enough of a beacon of hope in my life provided by the improvements in my health that I was able to keep going as I finally got some answers. From there the series moves up the Catskills on short trips I took to Hunter, Kingston, and Phoenicia.
I wrote about Kingston after visiting it briefly. Starting from that thematically I decided to write a piece focused on a royal court, specifically drawing from the tale of Belshazzar’s Feast in the biblical book of Daniel. I use being weighed and found seeking, as opposed to wanting, which is what was on the wall at Balshazzar’s Feast as I find myself seeking in Mountains for something but unsure of what just yet. I add in Pitch pine, a tree found in the Catskills and Hudson Valley, which thrives in poor soil and regenerates after fire. Like the pine, I have found myself regrowing unevenly in this season and filled with slow, twisting, winding regrowth.
About Hunter I wrote after a trip up into the Catskills from Hudson Valley. I relaxed here as I saw the fall foliages from a scenic chairlift and relished in a local Oktoberfest. It was here I began to see the next chapter of Mountains more clearly. I talk about the Sugar Maple tree here that is common in the area to describe the release. This felt similar to ki-urushi, the first step in making Lacquer which involves the release of sap from a tree, a subject of a previous poem. Ultimately, this poem is about the sweetness that follows long silences, the way that speaking can be a form of release. Besides the very real physical purge I undertook as my health improved I also felt a sense of verbal release in the fall as layoffs were announced at work and my voice suddenly regained strength in a particularly stressful personal moment.
Then , writing from a brief meal at Phoenicia Diner, in New York- a site of filming for the Apple TV Series, Severance, I explore the voice and body as alchemical sites in the Phoenician and Greco-Roman world. I was particularly interested in a Phoenician funerary practice involving lip sealing and the power that words can have as both representations of release but also as spells or divinations. I draw across languages from ancient Greece, Rome, and the Levant here to describe this quality as a qualitative change, not a quantitative one. The poem closes with defixios(κατάδεσμος) which are the thin sheets of lead known as curse tablets in the ancient Greco-Roman world, re-imagined here as benevolent spells. Through these layers of sacred speech and plants like the biblical Balsam and the modern Balsam fir in the Catskills, I look towards the syncretism that nature and religion can provide in speaking the future into existence.
This takes us into the Berkshires. As I traversed down the state from North Adams to Lenox, I visited MASS MOCA, and TOURISTS, Berkshires Untold, and the Miraval resort. Here I hiked and hummed as I felt the mental health benefits of nature in full. I went to see Greylock Mountain which inspired the next poem, Grey Lock/ Fool’s Gold. This made me think about Pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold. While it is modernly referred to as that, it made me research the many uses of Pyrite in the ancient world. In the Mayan civilization, Pyrite was used in rituals to connect to the underworld, known as Xibalba, especially in divination by Shamans or royals. The Pyrite, which was used along with hallucinogenics, and other practices like bloodletting, was supposed to be this portal. It made me think about what we think of as foolish, like the eponymous card in Tarot, and the interesting, revealing, and reflective truths those backroads can lead us to. Finally I end it at the Adirondacks where I spent the Fall.
There spent some time in Tupper Lake, and was able to visit the Wild Center, and small town life. I also explored Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, driving up and down the snowy towns, often getting trapped behind a plow truck or a flight cancellation. I left in December as the semester ended and Highland Echoes came to an end.
