What I’m Reading: Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. I: Bazzell, Call, McGrath

57º ~ a murky, heavy-sky day of gathering thunderstorms, late November in the mid-south, most trees have lost their leaves, but the sweet gum holds on, tenacious

The Floodgate Poetry Series features three chapbooks by three poets in a single volume, and the debut volume is just out from Upper Rubber Boot Books. This collection features chapbooks by Jenna Bazzell, Martin Anthony Call, and Campbell McGrath, and the series is edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, of poemoftheweek.org fame.

My connection to Volume I is that I blurbed Call’s contribution: The Fermi Sea: Book I of Hologhost. Today, I read both Bazzell’s and McGrath’s chapbooks as well. I’m struck by the distinct differences in each collection, and yet how the volume somehow holds together as a piece in itself. Overarching themes of history (both personal and political) woven through with glimpses of the future run through the collection.

First up is Jenna Bazzell’s Homeland. A devastating elegy for a troubled mother figure, the poems are frantic prayers spoken in a haunted, southern landscape. While I was impressed with the entire set of poems, “Nightgown” stuck with me, and I think I’ll be returning to it in the days to come. Here is the opening.

Tonight, call back the ghosts you refused–listen to their steps

from the ceiling to the floor–palms flat to the window, a pair
of stumbling bare feet. Nights like this you’re spun
                                                       in your mother’s skin: fingers
thin as forsythia limbs, slender neck bent over a coffee table.

After these poems of grief, grounded in a lush landscape, we move on to Martin Anthony Call’s The Fermi Sea. These poems move us into a dystopian future where the promise of technology has changed the world, but not always for the better.

Here’s my blurb: