Hyperion: forest notes by Lizi Gilad
Big Lucks Books, 2015
Gilad takes us on an exploration of sound and light, a consideration of the reach of history and modern life, a journey through the forest scape of Humbolt County, CA. Choosing to follow her into the woods is a decision to let go your sense of time and individuality.
An unlabeled topographic map serves as the cover art for Hyperion. The unpredictable nature of the lines, piled closely together or stretched without apparent relationship to one another, foreshadows what Gilad offers within. Her poems are untitled and flow from page to page without obvious breaks. The reader must work to self-orient and make decisions as to whether the poem moves between pages, or not. Gilad’s very first page break leaves us with—
violet energy
violent particles I picked along my floating
and the next page begins
hold a blowtorch
to the horseshoe
watch it heat
and glow
Is this writing contiguous? What is the relationship? Gilad offers no answers, only climbs and descends through the topography of experience and expects us to find our own way. Sometimes, she brings us to a peak and offers an unexpected vista—
“light is never sweet it is wet and slipping”
stands alone on a page, followed on the next by a list of locations we might be viewing: Myers Flat, Pepperwood, Rio Dell.
That light is a recurrent theme throughout the chapbook. The title Hyperion refers to the tallest known redwood, and it makes an appearance midway through, but Hyperion also references the titan parent of the sun and moon. Gilad touches on these both directly—
my job is to watch the light leak in
interesting patterns on the wall
and indirectly—
Carvaggio pulverized the bodies of lightning bugs
and with an opening discussion of distance, reminds us that numbers and measurements are randomly assigned values which mean little in the day-to-day life of an ecosystem.
Gilad frequently ties cultural references to her experiences. Cages’ writings lead us to consider silence as it does or does not exist in a space; Remedios Varos’ “Recuerdos de la Valkirian” serves to remind us of height, the coast line, and human-made structures.
Gilad closes as obliquely as she traveled through the writing:
lines more lines of lights
to direct us until
we drive too far…
The reader is directed back to these lines, the written and the imagined, to dig deeper and explore again the ways in which landscape shapes our perspective.
Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in the Best American Poetry blog, BOAAT, Epiphany, and The Writer’s Almanac. She is the author of Impossible Dovetail (IDES, Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). Follow her work at www.sonjajohanson.net.