The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by M. L.
Christmas.
~~~~~

BOOK REVIEW


_Down to the Dark River: Contemporary Poems about the Mississippi River_.
Edited by Philip C. Kolin and Jack B. Bedell. Louisiana Literature Journal
and Press, 2015. Pp. 232. 6 x 9". Paperback. $17.95. ISBN 978-0-945083-43-6.


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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
M. L. Christmas


Copyright (c) 2015 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.


 _Down to the Dark River: Contemporary Poems about the Mississippi River_
is not a volume for the faint of heart. It is a force to be reckoned with,
and its contents reverberate through the valleys and across the ridges of
mind, heart, and soul. These poems--contemporary in the sense they are
largely written in free verse and rely on the poets' own choices for
pacing, spacing, and voice--address daily life past and present, and the
variety of occurrences possible, along the Mississippi River and its
tributaries.


Mark Twain, known to have been dismissed as a "mere" humorist, was in fact
"the most serious man in the world." These, too, are deep, poetic waters:
sometimes ominous, sometimes playful, sometimes cryptic, but always
forceful. They defy easy categorization except to say they are profound.


Mark Twain, although not directly the book's subject, nevertheless suffuses
_Down to the Dark River_. His name appears in almost a dozen places, and
similarly do the names of a few of his best-known literary characters. The
book is filled with the tide of human experience from which Mark Twain drew
his literary drafts, and its pages make mention of such Twainy locations as
Cairo, Hannibal, Hartford, Napoleon, Natchez, and New Orleans.


A few poems evoke gritty, small-town scenes--for instance, the following
example by Travis Mossotti. Of interest to Twainians is that Mossotti was
once presented the May Swenson Poetry Award by none other than contest
judge Garrison Keillor (201)--who, as Forum members know, serves on the
Board of Trustees Advisory Council for the Mark Twain House & Museum in
Hartford. Mossotti's "Dupo" begins:


"Every day I ended up on the wrong side of the river

heading in the wrong direction, past Dupo, a town slumped

in red brick, tinseled with power lines and blown out

truck tires . . ." (132)


Then there are the exuberant outpourings. This one, "The Golden Meander,"
by Rose Nielsen, a poet and songwriter, takes neither a full breath nor a
formal line-break in its single, sinuous paragraph beginning with:


"ah the river bends, bends and genuflects to wash the bank, the washbank
bends and genuflects to speed and spin the silty silky water, the silt that
meets the salt a thousand and a thousand miles down, eight thousand miles
of those shoe fly pies…silk and silty bright blue bows, oxbows, fluvial
foulards, foolhardy as it tumbles . . ." (138)


Expressions of gratitude are included, such as this one by Michael
Heffernan, a poetry teacher at the University of Arkansas. In "River of
Life," after this heart-felt, matter-of-fact opening, Heffernan goes on to
credit the role of the river in his son's, and the overall household's,
healing process during that medical ordeal:


"The Mississippi River in Arkansas

also runs by Memphis, Tennessee,

where the doctors and staff at St. Jude Children's

Research Hospital saved our youngest son

Mickey's life after he was diagnosed

with leukemia when he was five years old.

This May the 2nd he turned thirty-one.

They put _cured_ on his folder twelve years ago . . ." (87)


Flooding is described in several poems. For example, in "Mississippi
River," Charles Rafferty, an author and faculty member at Albertus Magnus
College, states that after the water subsides:


"It becomes peaceful again. It makes us

want to picnic on the grassy banks

overlooking its beauty--the same

beauty that rearranged our living

room and left a catfish reeking

in the jaws of the baby grand." (147)


Burdens and perspectives both Native American and African American are
included-- among them, this one by Sterling D. Plumpp, a blues poet,
essayist, and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois-Chicago. In
"Cartographer of Possibility," the blues indeed wind through his verse:



". . . Your blue interpretations

of pains inside mud floats

to conjure Wright's pen

that lashes those claiming

 ownership over wealth you

give: _Birds and the bees

sing a little blues for me._

You are a liquid station of

 the underground rail

road. In Memphis, they'd

stack slave upon slave

in secret hideaways . . ." (145)


_Down to the Dark River_ is no easy, afternoon read. The poets'
multi-layered delvings take time, and only with rumination do their poetic
offerings provide their full "revealments of the river's marvelous
eccentricities," to borrow an unforgettable phrase from _Life on the
Mississippi_, chapter 24.


Revealments and lessons from the Mississippi can be found in any number of
impressive poems and lines. Young cub-pilot Samuel Clemens, by concerted
effort, came "to know all the million trifling variations of shape in the
banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shape [in the dark]
of the front hall at home" (_Life on the Mississippi_, chapter 8), a thing
that had once seemed unimaginable to him. The poets of _Down to the Dark
River_ each strive to define and come to terms with the shapes encountered
in their own darkened hallways.


Prefacing the book is a two-component Prologue, followed by an Introduction
from the editors. In the Prologue, one finds "The Negro Speaks of Rivers,"
by Missouri-born Langston Hughes, the legendary African American poet,
playwright, and activist who was part of the Harlem Renaissance of the
1920s. His poem voices a proud and resilient heritage:


"I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.


My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep….

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans . . ." (xv)


Also in the Prologue is a piece entitled "Mississippi Mesostics: Meandering
Through Mark Twain," constructed by Sue Walker, Poet Laureate of Alabama
from 2003 to 2012. Walker's mesostic--a form of poetry that quotes material
from a prose source, inserts line-breaks, and then aligns selected letters
along a vertical axis in order to emphasize those letters for the purposes
of spelling out "hidden" words within the original text--adapts some
phrases from chapter 4 of _Life on the Mississippi_. Her mesostic reveals:
"MARK TWAIN WATER AMBITION STEAMBOAT" (xvi). One cannot help but wonder
what other "secret messages" may be lurking in Mark Twain's works.


The Introduction from the editors is a skillful interweaving of lines and
themes from each of the poets represented in the book, so if your time is
limited, reading the Introduction provides a sort of "express" version of
the book; but do not cheat yourself by stopping there. Get out into those
headwaters, proceed to the shipping channel, and muscle your way to the
Gulf. The full voyage through _Down to the Dark River_ is well worth
making, again and again.


Among the 100 poet-contributors to _Down to the Dark River_, over a dozen
are current or former state Poets Laureate and two are former U.S.
Laureates. The writers include Yusef Komunyakaa, winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry in 1994; former U.S. Poets Laureate Ted Kooser and Natasha
Trethewey; and Linda Pastan, a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize for
lifetime achievement. But lesser known names--this volume seemingly the
start of their ascents in the poetic realm--are also represented, such as
Master's degree students Anna Beth Rowe and Marley Stuart. All pack a punch.


Another notable contributor is Margaret Britton Vaughn, Poet Laureate of
Tennessee and a Quarry Farm Fellow. Forum members may recall meeting her at
a past Elmira College conference and perhaps purchasing a signed copy of
her poetry volume entitled, _Foretasting Heaven: Talking to Twain at Quarry
Farm_.


The editors, Philip C. Kolin and Jack B. Bedell, have done a remarkable job
in the face of what would seem, to mere mortal eyes, to be an unconquerable
wall of poetic water from which to choose. Kolin is the University
Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at the
University of Southern Mississippi where he also edits the _Southern
Quarterly_. Bedell teaches English at Southeastern Louisiana University
where he edits _Louisiana Literature_ and directs Louisiana Literature
Press. The editors know their stuff, and the variety of voices and styles
represented in _Down to the Dark River_--the editors' own poetic
contributions included--make this book a challenging and mind-expanding
read.


The existence of what appear possibly to be a few, very minor,
typographical glitches--true errata, as distinguished from artistic
license--does not preclude this reviewer from pronouncing this book's
barrage of powerful poetry pitch-perfect from beginning to end.


The alphabetic arrangement of material, by the poets' surnames, results in
a felicitous happenstance of A to Z. The book begins with a sunrise ("River
Morning," by Ralph Adamo), and ends with a late afternoon "cocktail" of
Mississippi and Yangtze "garnished with a cherry / of a river sunset"
("Confluence of the Two Rivers," by Jianqing Zheng). At the literal end of
its poetic "day," the book has concluded its riparian journey with a
cocktail glass raised in salute to the mighty metaphor that is the river in
all its forms. In _Down to the Dark River_, Sam Clemens would feel right at
home.

_____

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: M. L. Christmas, M.S.M., is a freelance writer/editor
and occasional poet who has herself written contemporary verse about the
Mississippi River and life along its banks. This is her fourteenth book
review for the Mark Twain Forum.