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A review by suddenflamingword
Ultima Thule by Davis McCombs
3.0
While a strongly shaped collection, I'm left indifferent by the central metaphor of the cave. As "most beautiful when it come close/to absence" as McCombs gets with his poesy, it doesn't seem to exceed or diverge from the cavernous imaginary that has driven literature for as long as literature has been aware of caves. Perhaps its most durable poems bind this spelunker metaphysics to power: the archaeologists that "bend like surgeons" yet seem to never wonder "what artifact will tell the future/of a longing wild and inarticulate" line up with Stephen Bishop's largely inarticulate longing under the boot of the entrepreneurial slaver Doctor Croghan who owned Mammoth Cave.
There's an underlying (no pun intended) obsession with control that feels undernourished in exchange for, as Merwin notes in his foreword, "what informs the references, all of them, is the underworld." The idea of the "subaltern cannot speak" comes to mind- Bishop's experiences as "my pale inventions" and McCombs poetry like being "vigilant for his shadow in my own/his voice as it differed from the wind." In that sense it's very much a child of its time, though I wonder if by bending over it like a surgeon I'm artifacting it. Regardless, It's a smart collection made sturdy by the historical reliability of its central metaphor.
There's an underlying (no pun intended) obsession with control that feels undernourished in exchange for, as Merwin notes in his foreword, "what informs the references, all of them, is the underworld." The idea of the "subaltern cannot speak" comes to mind- Bishop's experiences as "my pale inventions" and McCombs poetry like being "vigilant for his shadow in my own/his voice as it differed from the wind." In that sense it's very much a child of its time, though I wonder if by bending over it like a surgeon I'm artifacting it. Regardless, It's a smart collection made sturdy by the historical reliability of its central metaphor.