lavagurl's reviews
177 reviews

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

3.75

Taneum Bambrick debuts Vantage, a collection where one can not escape the landscape. Vantage is a place or position affording a good view but our view is of contemporary rural America, a space wrought with contradictions. Scenes are rooted in raw reality, not loose metaphors. A portrait of the working class is portrayed by a privileged poet who participates in the ecosystem of the reservoirs of dams on the Columbia River. Being the only woman on a garbage crew, the self is scarred much like the geography, yet exists as a site of reclamation and repair. A dam-drowned town tells of a love poem to the Earth, urging action and attention in Bambrick’s exploration of place, occupying no place, and places us as occupiers of the land.

The collection opens up with Litter, language that evokes a visceral reaction with no room for romanticization. The first line “I become part of this garbage crew” (5) invites us to do the work of witnessing. This poem prepared us with the symbolism—the condoms an object of sexuality, the dead goat a series of animal imagery to come and a stand-in for sacrifice, and “the sound of a spine snapped” (5) as a signifier of violence. Despite the descriptions, the speaker does not convey the scene from a distance. In “litter grabbers outstretched, I’m combing for the bottom half,” (5) Bambrick makes an effort to uncover the buried bodies left behind that no one cares to look after.

Elk Splat imagines “whoever’d spooked the elk was the kind of person we liked to imagine as one rich kid. What we were better than” (14), Bambrick touches on the role of class and holds this sentiment of separation also expressed in Ownership as “I played a passive part in exploiting. Even now. I make it hard for myself to blame me” (27). It is easy to entertain binaries of right and wrong but Bambrick rejects these easy assumptions. “There was little we could do to move them” (14) expresses the helplessness of the individual but reinstates that everyone is complicit. For Bambrick, this is a summer job, one gotten through their father’s connections which offers the comfort of leaving after looking. The locals look too, making a spectacle out of the mess. Yet “Some parts preserved under water” (14) is a refusal in remains.

Road Salvage encourages us to examine our selfishness, to see how we can exist outside of the self. Rapid industrialization and colonization are contrasted by the resistance of systems, “called that impulse bodily” (19). Jim covers for the speaker when he could easily choose profit over people. He demonstrates the significance of consideration, using the wood to make a fort for his grandkid and the antlers for his wife’s paperweight. His humanity rests in his refusal to be cast as a caricature made to be pitied, “some dust bowl feeding his family from the trash.” (20) These people are not victims. They assert agency in resisting rigidity.

Biological Control Task takes violence and mistakes it for the mundane, the seagulls as “dirty laundry” and “wet book covers” (21). Its slant rhymes create patterns of reliable violence. “Show them our girl” (22) is cognizant of the category of woman and their worth. The heron is beheld as a beautiful bounty. “When I cried it made them comfortable like I could be a daughter, wife or something they knew how to see” (22) reaffirms the men’s perception of femininity. Her hesitation to take up space on her own page is evident in her characterization through the eyes of the crew in moments of misogyny or overt expressions of masculinity. The final line is echoed in Sturgeon, a series of prose stanzas that confront the ugly.

The speaker in Biological Control Task crying for the heron but not the seagulls brings up the question of what deserves sympathy. The language of the perpetrators matters, as “our fossil fish” enacts possession. Do we only protect what provides for us? Bambrick argues that no place is of more value than another, and no life is not worth saving. When asked “Why would you stay?” (53), Bambrick responds with pride in her work and an omission of guilt. Through anecdotes about her father, we are not to find who is at fault but “decide what I could live with” and acknowledge that “Even in our best attempts at reparation we excavate.” (54)

Bambrick stands at the intersection of ecology and identity, reminding us to realize the relationship between the land, ourselves, and other people. In witnessing this common violence, our power resides in “our memory of what the river means.” (54)

Content Warnings