IN THE CITIES OF SLEEP–the new collection by Elizabeth C Herron, the essayist, teacher, artist, and poet laureate of Sonoma County, California–is an extended meditation on nature, both what it was and what it is becoming, especially via the destructive, unnecessary intervention of humans. Some nature poets, like William Wordsworth in The Prelude, have a grand unifying vision. Others, like the Imagists, focus on one moment in time, attenuating that moment to tease out its richness.
Herron’s poems mostly fall into the latter category. Take, for example, “February Freeze,” which compares two astonishing tableaus: a trio of birds frozen on the ground and an Eritrean stowaway on a Boeing 747 who, in the final lines, “was found frozen, fallen / to an English village street.” A more didactic poet would have kept going, discussing the comparison’s significance and tying it into a clearly defined philosophy. Herron, on the other hand, lets these singular images stand on their own. The same thing happens in the Ezra Pound-like “Migrants,” which reads in its entirety: “Open water / The slap of the Mediterranean / A photograph / One among many.” It would be a much different–much weaker–poem without that word “slap.”
Herron’s strength is her imagery, her wordplay, and her Native American allusions (“If only Coyote had stayed back / by the long shadows. / If only / he hadn’t gotten hold of that stick / of sunlight.”). Less compelling are her forays into politics. The few COVID-19 poems, for example, feel obligatory. A poem about the 2016 bombings in Aleppo, Syria starts with promise but ends in cliche. These stumbles, however, scarcely detract from an otherwise excellent collection. Herron’s voice is incantatory, leading the reader into her sad-but-wise worldview. The amazing thing about these poems, which are written about war, disease, climate change, and other ills, is how optimistic they sound. Herron is not someone who has given up. Despite the wreck and ruin around her, she is still able to celebrate beauty. IN THE CITIES OF SLEEP (Is the echo of H.P. Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep intentional? A rebuttal to Lovecraft’s recurring theme of hopelessness?) is a treasure for that reason alone.
The striking and enchanting poems contained in Elizabeth Herron’s IN THE CITIES OF SLEEP find beauty amid the surprising subjects of war, disease, climate change, and other ills.
~Anthony Aycock for IndieReader