Sea Called Fruitfulness by Martha Carlson-Bradley
Word Tech Editions, 2013
Allow Martha Carlson-Bradley to take you back to 17th century Italy in poems that chronicle the passions and travails of two Jesuit astronomers as they map the moon. The Jesuits permitted priests to engage in research projects that tested the bounds of received knowledge while demanding they hold fast to church teachings. This conundrum complicated the lives—and souls—of Carlson-Bradley’s astronomers: Giovanni Riccioli and Francesco Grimaldi.
In “The Red City,” dedicated to Grimaldi, Carlson-Bradley imagines the city of Bologna where he and Riccioli worked. “Even in photos,” she writes, “Bologna shimmers.” The poem imagines what it must have been like for Grimaldi to walk the city.
When you, a novice,
mused among buildings that stored
noontime sun, to release it
slowly by moonlight,each pillar and wall you passed
warmed the air that touched you—
as you strolled along routesof peach, pink, whole streets in the hues
of lips and palms.
Note the intricate patterns of assonance: you/mused/noon/moon; consonance: pillar/wall/strolled; and alliteration: peach/pink/palms. All seem natural in this intimate address. To the speaker, the warmth of the city nurtured this “novice” Jesuit. In such an environment, he thrived.
While Grimaldi, the younger man, actually drew the map, Riccioli took the role of namer. To Riccioli, the poet composes “Words on the Moon.” Initially, she notes how he named the craters “for famous men,” among them Galileo. Obviously, this was risky. Galileo had gotten into trouble with the church for research that disproved the earth as center of the universe. How did Riccioli select his names? For some, he chose the obvious:
… since the Moon
whips up our weather, bending so close to Earth
the seas well up to meet it,you invented lands of Frost and Snow,
an inlet of Hot Days and the Island of Winds,
and waterways we never find at home—
Other names are more creative, as “the human seeps in” and “the Bay of Epidemics heaves / off Peninsula Deliriorum.” The human element intrigues the poet, and as she reads the moon map, she reads the mind-set of her two astronomers.
In “Dead Reckoning,” Carlson-Bradley explores why Riccioli and Grimaldi took on this project.
To save the sailor here on Earth
this mapping the Moon began in earnest.With features eclipsed precisely, minute by minute,
the Moon could give our globe its linesof longitude; and ships could sail to port
with more than guesswork.
The moon map was essential for mariners, and the moon itself is essential to life on earth, as Carlson-Bradley writes in “Rare Earth Theory” where the poet contemplates the origin of the earth/moon partnership:
How much depends on chance—
the body glancing off Earth
just at the right angle, thrusting offjust enough matter to make the Moon, the Moon
just large enough, just the right distance awayto rule the tides and seasons, to let the first cells
ignite in a temperate sea.
The first line makes a simple assertion in what evolves into a passage about the formation of life upon earth. She makes her point with a series of parallel “just” phrases, followed by two infinitive phrases. Her sentence construction gives the image its momentum. Carlson-Bradley is a poet with a sentence-sense that patterns the way the mind moves. Experiencing the flow of those thoughts is one of the key pleasures of reading this volume of poems.
Claire Keyes is the author of The Question of Rapture and Rising and Falling. Her new book of poems, What Diamonds Can Do, was published in 2015 by Cherry Grove Collections. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Literary Bohemian, Sugar Mule, Oberon, Crab Orchard Review, and Adanna.