A review by laura_sackton
Vantage by Taneum Bambrick

“We can only save the river with our memory of what the river means.” 

This collection is mostly about the time Bambrick spent working collecting trash along the dams on the Columbia River in rural eastern Washington. It’s gritty and dark, full of bodies, the broken and bloody bodies of animals and people, the living bodies of men. There is an intense recitation of sexism and violence and assumptions and crude jokes and endless misogyny from the men on her garbage crew. But there is also a knowing of these people, a knowing of the small rural places they come from, and the poems don’t make excuses, but they tell truths. It reminded me a lot of Ducks. 

There are some long prose poems, one about sturgeons and another about Bambrick's father, who was a conservationist for Fish and Wildlife, and the complicated relationships between protecting animals and not protecting people. What does it mean to fight for an imperfect place? So much of this book is about the dirty dirty work of maintaining and taking care of the messes humans make and the things humans build. What’s trash and what isn’t?

There's also a lot about the grind of a job, and what jobs do not allow—space for grief and wonderment, how the routine and rhythm of the job can wear you down and mess with what it feels like to be a human. The poems are very still and stark. The language is direct but melancholy.