Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedit is better to dream than to face the darkness.
D.A. Lockhart’s seventh poetry collection, North of Middle Island, is a work that I struggle to share adequately.
Divided into two parts, the first half consists of poems in which Lockhart examines and reports on a “land that has been forgetful of its Indigenous past”: Pelée Island (resting north of Middle Island in Lake Erie), and the forces (both natural and colonial) that shape life there. Something is unsettling about the poems; at times, his descriptions would leave me feeling that I was in a remote space. He uses white space and words with equal skill, creating the feeling of quiet remoteness that one can have while in nature “alone” (despite being surrounded by teeming hidden life).
Other times, the world of the island is sumptuously painted: A sunrise is described as being “awash in a deepening bruise of our long waking slide towards morning and beyond”; the skittering of terns are “talons raking sand like a breath”; or, the rabbits (chëmàmsàk) kick up dust “as they dance from ditch to ditch” (the latter a particular example of the poet’s use of white space to simulate the darting of small creatures across the road).
Primarily in English, Lockhart weaves the Lenape language (of the Unami dialect) throughout the collection, providing spiritual links across time and space. (He shares a reference guide defining the words used; I wish I could hear how they are pronounced for the full lyrical effect I fear that I’m missing.)
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedthe match to set the world sufficiently right.
The second part of the collection is a shift in tone (with a…
