"The Laureate of Loss," a review of Jared Carter's The Land Itself, by poet & reviewer David Lee Garrison, has just appeared in the online journal Mock Turtle Zine.
Of Carter's book, Garrison writes: "The black and white photographs within the book and on its cover, taken by the poet himself, have no human figures in them. They have the lonely look of Andrew Wyeth paintings—abandoned houses, a closed-up church, cemetery figurines, an old mill, spirea flowing over a wall and casting shadows. And yet, the poems are about people and their struggles, people and their wanderings across Midwestern landscapes. Jared Carter tells us their stories.
The poems are as stark, uncluttered, and unassuming as the photographs. The poet does not moralize or generalize or draw abstract conclusions. He lets the people and the land and the structures that remain on it speak for themselves. He draws back a curtain on the past and shows us birds in the rafters of a covered bridge, gas street lamps it was thought would never go out, and a coffin filled with rock salt. Then he offers us a glimpse of the human context of such things.
What we hear in these poems are primordial echoes of the land and reverberations from little Midwestern towns. What we see and experience are defining moments in lives now mostly forgotten."
The entirety of this review can be read in the current issue of Mock Turtle Zine. Scroll down to the end of the issue.
