River and Ditch
Review by Carol Ciavonne
Wonder about the (2023) winner 2022 Halcyon Prize Middle Creek Publishing (Human Ecology) by Matthew Cooperman
The river and the ditch; two familiar sights to residents, friends, and lovers of the Western states, are, in this wondrous book, the signposts for the people, creatures and landscapes that inhabit them. Although Matthew Cooperman writes particularly in the context of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado (the Minni Luzahan in the Sioux language) readers will find the beauty of sagebrush, wildflowers and prairie dogs, as well as the ugliness of toxic waste, poisoned water, fracking and, perhaps as dangerous, human inattention, apt to regions everywhere. In its vast perception of what we have forgotten, how little we know, and what we need to pay attention to, Wonder about the ranges from the Pleistocene to natural and native history to the atom bomb, and Flint, Michigan in our own Anthropocene era.
Cooperman’s writing follows the trajectory of the river, beginning with the poem “Thesis,” featuring a Whitmanesque gazetteer of native tribal names: Arapaho, Ute, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Sioux, the names we retain as history, while the river “rolls on through vanquished and massacred body” then “through Larimer, Pitkin and Koenig body” where the nomenclature of the bankers and settlers has obliterated even the syllables of many languages once spoken here. Through “money, money” it rolls on, sometimes in the full spate of spring, sweeping history before it, sometimes in the soothing shallower rhythm of summer, allowing time and motion for perspective; it ‘rolls on beyond us.”
“A River in Spring” evokes all the original wonder and the present-day depredation of the river even while “my heart gets pulled / to the surface / of the river.” Through the use of different fonts printed in various colors, Cooperman accentuates what a modern viewer might see: “train bridge a tag / of Rosas a bicycle / blue with plastic bags caught / in scouring elms.”
But in “Benzene Burns the Buttercup,” a beautifully lyrical poem about the deadly harm being done to nature and to humans, we start to see the specific effects of generational exploitation of people and land, and the acrid residue created by the fossil fuel industry :“love at the end of the pipe / mild today chance of scattered acids / will be spraying down roads cover mouths.” The things that happen to us are happening to all creatures: “diversification rain in the prairie dog towns / gas ‘em in hubris in August with intention.” Indeed, there is “ no pollen rest for the weary wind / benzene burns the buttercup / weary bird in the sheening water...”
The searing dichotomy between beauty and commerce is the subject of Cooperman’s daring project, and indeed, perhaps, the central issue for humans in our time, encompassing as it does destruction of natural resources and the habitats of animals and people, poisoning our health, and the stoking of the war machine.
Cooperman uses actual historical material such as quotations, maps, and newsletter excerpts, to resurrect our past, contextualize our present and issue both warning and hope for our future. In a poem called “The Niobrara Blues,” Cooperman quotes from a Colorado oil and gas industry publication that notes the existence of 43,354 active oil and gas wells as of 2010. “Analysts believe there is more to be found.” In an accompanying 100,000 Well Prediction Map, we see the horrifying visual evidence of what is to come in bright red. Cooperman brings a large helping of irony to the newsletter headline “Who Wants to be a Shale’ionnaire?’ directing the reader to the connection between “diatom drill bit storage tank / energy complete or commerce completed.” In the “Second Report on the Niobrara Shales,” the poet replies to the corporate attorney who negotiated “ the very best deal we could get.” Addressed to “Michelle,” the poem records the loss of the very beauty in which we live, “under sugar pines / rosa woodsill / pale pink star / spangling sky / with white water…” to remind her and all of us that “humans are not an area.”
This book demands attention to its construction as well as its scope. Cooperman has used size and color of font for emphasis, as well as loving and beautiful photos of river and ditches (taken by the author and his wife, poet Aby Kaupang) to accompany and augment the text. In his end notes, he pays homage to the poets and local residents whose work partly inspired the book. Above all, Cooperman’s rich and eclectic language electrifies his meaning, using Greek and Latin to dig at the roots of a phrase, and perhaps even to hark back to 19th century education, as well as definitions, scientific terms, and quotations. He has, in addition, created original erasures from the works of poets famous for their writing about place, from Whitman to William Carlos Williams, up to and including James Galvin.
In “Look Up,” Cooperman describes what any passing motorist can see from the highway: “farmer in fields / carving wheat / what runs through his / frequency / turning bright Deere / its green and yellow motion / a part of the field’s design.” This too, along with how we perceive the dinosaur-like “Backhoe with Gryphon Tail” connects us back to the geologic past of the country, as well as the reasons (settlers and farmers) we live here now. Even Lt. John C. Fremont of the US Army, one of the early governmental land usurpers, was moved by the beauty of the land. Cooperman quotes his description of “a beautiful circular valley… rich with water and grass, fringed with pine… and a paradise to all grazing animals.” After the US government banished the native populations, then claimed and opened up the land to the public, the settlers came, settled, and raised more grazing animals, as well as sugar beets and wheat. Cities grew.
In a last-ditch, if belated, effort to restore the land, twenty-first century environmentalists have sometimes been successful; for example, the Arapahoe National Wildlife Refuge was once the Iva Mae Ranch, whose descendant the author has interviewed as research for this book. Here too, are the manmade ditches, straight and shallow, dug to purpose for irrigation and as property boundaries; as Cooperman notes, “There’s labor in them thar fields.” “Dynamite, dynamite, mules / & Asian labor, mostly.” He asks, “Who are these ditches/named for, no not the person / who dug ‘em, nameless / dead from a foreign land, the / immigrants Mules ate better…” (“Who Are These Ditches.”)
Cooperman indicts us as well for our loss of feeling for both people and land, in “Apple Ladder.” At some point book knowledge became a barrier to living-knowledge, or at best an inadequate replacement. As he says, “scholia made us/ lose our heads,” but maybe we can learn how to reacquire that knowledge through living: even “in our cushioned talk / we weep and rage / remembering / through learning / what we knew.” Whether this will be enough to stop and reverse the destruction, we can only hope. We have a long way to go. In “According to Their Relative Positions,” Cooperman’s experimental incorporation of William Carlos Williams’s “Paterson” alongside other sources gives character and definition to the land likely to be inundated by the planned Glade Reservoir near Fort Collins, which is now, but soon may not be “Glade glad a clearing in the woods / we gather together in the sunshine.”
As with many water projects, the need for such is at best, questionable (there being a number of existing reservoirs). Many people remain unconvinced, and the conflict between public and private water rights is ongoing and life threatening. Mixing the language of industry sources with human and ecological concerns, the author notes with barbed humor: “Several geologic hazards have been identified within the Glade Unit: flooding, landslides, rockfalls, graft, debris flows, faults, collapsible soils, hell and tarnation, ground subsistence, etc. The River requests a pause.”
Cooperman identifies and exhorts us, as citizens of the world, to take action to preserve: “the world depends on Citizen their singing / as well: daffodils/gentian, the daisy, columbine / what is watching doing / Citizen rides the bus.” But what rejuvenates Citizen after the bus ride is always the beauty, the calm and the relaxation to be found on the river. And what we value, we will protect. (“Save the Poudre! No Things but in Existing Glades!”)
In “Skin of River Dressed,” an afternoon idyll of tubing down the river, “now cold water, back / afloat on difference, mild / shock to settle butt / And go, turn, spin, drift, forget / ” in “a summer’s dream/of floating, hot green sap through/ willow cathedrals.” On the banks, we see “picnic’ers, young / in sweet clouds of sweet green bud, / or older couples / planted in chairs, holding hands / chatting in clouds of sweet bud / dogs lolling, and dogs / swimming, and children in play.” Maybe these times where we can rediscover our relationship with nature, where “Boxelder rustles a soft / applause, Steller’s jay says go” will help us relearn to steward what we have around us.
We are caught in our greedy present, which is perhaps not so different from our greedy past. But, as Wonder about the demonstrates, if we can nurture hearts as large as our brains, we may still live to appreciate “all the creatures, past, present and future.” The poem “Second Circle” captures the sense of freedom, wonder, and longing that is our last, best hope.
Second Circle
white buildings floating over tawny river bottom
fleeting stay under a pebble of stars----
who sees
the black mink
loping wild
in the wind
is free
to Wyoming
Carol Ciavonne’s poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Interim, and New American Writing, among other journals. Essays and reviews can be found in Interim, Colorado Review, Rain Taxi, Entropy, and Pleiades. She is the author of Birdhouse Dialogues (LaFi 2013) (with artist Susana Amundaraín) and a collection, Azimuth (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). Ciavonne is an editor of the online journal Posit.