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The Meter Reader: Heather June Gibbons achieves a "sudsy riot of language" in听Her Mouth as Souvenir

Amie Whittemore

搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Her Mouth as Souvenir听by Heather June Gibbons (University of Utah Press, 2018).

Heather June Gibbons鈥檚听Her Mouth as Souvenir听dazzles. The poems practically vibrate off the page as they push forward to the next observation, the next joke, the next loneliness. Gibbons examines and exploits the way language heightens and complicates perception in these poems: they are at once absurd yet grounded, sincere yet gritty. They demonstrate how language muddles as much as clarifies reality.

滨苍听Her Mouth as Souvenir, Gibbons conflates pretend with reality, copy with original, memory with forgetting, mistake with the speaker鈥檚 name. These conflations often center around a slippery speaker. In 鈥淢use the Drudge,鈥� for instance, the 鈥淚鈥� announces its many selves: 鈥淚, the hackneyed beauty queen,鈥� is no 鈥済irl-wisp, nor clipped wing-tip / nor treachery of baubles.鈥� This speaker 鈥渂low[s] shit up:鈥� 鈥渉eart-husk, wax drip, I lick you, there / now you鈥檙e licked.鈥� Here, and in other poems such as 鈥淪elf Portrait as Tongue,鈥� Gibbons insists that the self is the starting place of misconceptions: while 鈥淪elf Portrait as Tongue鈥� starts out in an acupuncturist鈥檚 office, like many of her poems, it roams far, considering

a strange kind of convenience,

to access at the tap of a fingertip

so much information without

听

the ability to understand it.

Cataract means flawed vision听

but also waterfall, cascade.听

In this poem, the self is bothered by how it might be perceived by the acupuncturist, as well as by what it sees: we can access 鈥渟o much information鈥� but lack the facility to process it; so what to do? Carry on, her poetry suggests through the quick leaps it makes.

In both these poems Gibbons also calls attention to the multiplicity of meaning that exists in a single word; explicitly as in her definition of 鈥渃ataract,鈥� but also, in 鈥淢use the Drudge,鈥� through 鈥渓ick鈥� and 鈥渓icked:鈥� is the 鈥測ou鈥� physically licked or licked, as in defeated? Both, of course, and in this 鈥渂othness鈥� the possibility of certainty dissolves: how can we know anything?

Gibbons further explores this uncertainty in the second section, with particular attention to how uncertainty intersects with desire. The second section contains a series of beautiful 鈥淪ore Songs,鈥� which contemplate the impossibilities of desire. In one 鈥淪ore Song,鈥� 鈥渢he eye / misreads what it wants to see,鈥� and 鈥渟o too the ear hears what it needs / or what it fears, and every letter turns love letter.鈥� Here, and throughout this section, perception beds down with longing: what we seek is often misread and it鈥檚 hard to discern need from fear. Complicating perception is our interaction with technology, a preoccupation that Gibbons returns to throughout the book. In 鈥淪o Far Gone,鈥� the speaker suggests 鈥渢he most beautiful songs are the ones you can / barely hear because they are so far away,鈥� and that 鈥渢he sound of the foghorn is determined / by the landscape through which it must travel, // often overwhelming in extreme close-up / though dear when heard from far away.鈥� Here, distance, which is reinforced by the echoes of 鈥渇ar away,鈥� is required for us to genuinely connect with our affection; otherwise, perhaps due to human nature, perhaps due to our technological lives, we are overwhelmed, shut down by the conflation of device-enhanced loneliness and being out of practice with true intimacy.

Gibbons鈥檚 poetry acknowledges these troubles of modern life and participates in them, and its self-awareness suggests a kind of grace: in her critiques of self and perception, of pretend and reality, humor slides in, and with it, balm. Wit becomes the home of a capacious spirit: embrace the nonsense and some of the good stuff will stick too. In 鈥淔ill this Box with Flames,鈥� she writes, 鈥渞emember that we are not / really ourselves, but perfect // copies of a long-lost original / a revolutionary system / so gentle it removes the stone / without bruising the fruit.鈥� Instead of fretting about the faultiness of our selves and senses, Gibbons suggests we take pleasure in it; in 鈥淚-Beam,鈥� the poem ends: 鈥測ou think what you hear is a song. // Turns out it鈥檚 just someone dusting the keys.鈥� What鈥檚 the difference between what we want to hear, what we think we hear, and what鈥檚 actually played? Doesn鈥檛 matter, these poems suggest, and isn鈥檛 that terrifying, but also marvelous?

Her Mouth as Souvenir听is one of those rare debut collections that asks more questions than it answers, opens more doors than it closes; heck, it鈥檚 inventing doors along the way. As Jericho Brown notes in his foreword to the book, 鈥渉er speaker has at her access every image surrounding any single observation and all of the history that could lead to that observation.鈥� This density of observation in听Her Mouth as Souvenir听is overwhelming in the best ways. These poems manifest the pleasures of complexity, the sudsy riot of language: read us again, they beckon, as if anything could be understood entirely, as if a singular meaning was attainable鈥攁s if we could do anything but revel in the failures of the heart, the eyes, the ears, and the mind.