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The Meter Reader: Sarah Barber's听Country House听"taunts the reader's revelry"

David Nilsen

Reviewed:听Country House听by Sarah Barber (Pleiades Press, 2018).

鈥淵ou鈥檙e not here to feel something / about nature,鈥� writes Sarah Barber in 鈥淭he History of Landscape,鈥� the opening poem in her new collection听Country House. She writes of trees and sun with clipped but idyllic language before taunting the reader鈥檚 revelry with this proclamation: 鈥淟et me warn you / right now: they did not come into existence / to be beautiful.鈥�

Most of the subjects of Barber鈥檚 poems are far from beautiful, however lovely the language in which they are rendered.听Country House听takes the pastoral form and shifts its gaze from the rocks and the rills to dumps and decay. The collection refuses the reader the escapist comforts of nature poetry, instead turning a soft light on what our modern ecosystem is comprised of: crumbling buildings, waste, industrial eyesores, and our engineered attempts to disguise it all as progress. Barber presents this trash pastoral as the new shape of the form in the late Anthropocene. We鈥檝e poisoned the rivers, but they still catch the light at sunset.

In 鈥淩everdie,鈥� Barber shows us a melting snow berm behind a VFW:

I shake off the hood of my raincoat,

count crushed cans of Labatt

and the labels, faded to orange-gold,

of liter bottles of Coke. Here and there

a plastic bag, translucent folds

of paper.

There is little judgment in most of these passages. She even seems to find unlikely beauty, or if not beauty, than at least an objective portrait of nature as we鈥檝e fashioned it. If our fields blow with newspapers and Walmart bags, well, that鈥檚 one set of landscape images to take in and describe. Like bird species that make their nests from our shiniest trash, Barber festoons her verses with the most colorful bits of our industrial shame.

In 鈥淏uilding the Waterfall,鈥� she writes

Let this be October in Public Works鈥�

free calendar. Let the enormous blocks

of four-ply steel with synthetic

yellows shame the leaves.

鈥�

...The actual

stones make way for those with shapelier

stone-shapes

鈥淚 never was one for nostalgia,鈥� her speaker confesses later in the poem, and while that certainly seems true for the most part, there is a high, golden-throated ache throughout听Country House, like the slow melting of spring, in which Barber seems conscious of protesting too much. It doesn鈥檛 have to be called nostalgia鈥攐r, it isn鈥檛 nostalgia鈥檚 worst expression鈥攖o long for a better past.

She finishes the poem:

If in the parks of my childhood

a gold overspill of gaudies still grows,

they raise their tiny heads on waste.

So that river was shit. I鈥檓 over it.

Weeds will where they gorgeous will.

Those last lines offer the only glimmer of hope in these verses, though听hope听might be too strong a word. A clear-eyed appreciation for beauty, perhaps, even if it鈥檚 a beauty that glows suspiciously. We鈥檝e burned this planet at both ends, but it鈥檚 given a lovely light.

It is rare in听Country House听that Barber鈥檚 cynicism melts completely to reveal more classic expressions of pastoral reverie, though there are reprieves. In 鈥淲hy I Am Crying Into My Gin-and-Tonic,鈥� she paints a portrait of a dripping twilight beauty, though one tinged with tears:

the person in this poem is so sad鈥�

as if the rain had been more

than routinely violent; as if grief

were not cut with golden

She goes on to describe 鈥渃rickets legging it to the heart鈥檚 / old etcetera,鈥� and how 鈥渆ven the stars are getting lit.鈥� These moments of sincere, even playful, vulnerability allow us to trust the sardonic imagery that defines most of the collection.

Barber applies the same objectivist lens to reflections on incarnation and human love. In 鈥淟ullaby,鈥� she observes,

We couldn鈥檛 be

less like the celestial bodies.

A pair of pins. Two grains of salt.

The spent soap split in the dish.

There is no sentimental daydreaming about being made of stardust in听Country House, though that ontological wonder does get wryly applied in the opposite direction in 鈥淗ousekeeping,鈥� which begins,

听Sometimes I decide to be good

at it, to croon through the house

with a broom murmuring

sweet, sweet, as if the dust

were timorous and loved me as it did

once when it was skin and hair

and fur

There are points at which Barber acknowledges her seeming inability to accept the pretty things everyone around her wants to cling to, be they nature or love or ecological hope. In 鈥淢nemonic Feast,鈥� she recounts her experience at a farm-to-table dinner party. With mounting impatience at the group鈥檚 masturbatory indulgence of the organizer鈥檚 sensory charades leading to the serving of the food itself, she writes, 鈥淚 am hungry enough to mouth the words // they want, which turn out to be听濒辞肠补濒听/听肠辞濒濒别肠迟颈惫别.鈥�

Those around her, however, are invested in this sustainability theater.

听...the back-to-the-landers eat it all up鈥�

they鈥檝e all been lovers, they all know how

to grow potatoes and milk cows听

She concludes the poem with these lines that hold much meaning for the collection as a whole: 鈥淚鈥檒l never belong here / but I鈥檓 hungry enough not to say it out loud.鈥�

That thought offers a succinct summary for听Country House. There is a chippiness to these poems that could read as misanthropic, but a closer read reveals a beating heart beneath the brutal objectivity at play here, one that sees little function in dressing up decay or calling the fractured relationship that exists between us and the world a caretaker鈥檚 intimacy. If Ottessa Moshfegh wrote nature poetry, one could imagine a similar slant, one that reads more as tease than taunt. The world is dying and we鈥檙e ridiculous apes, but there鈥檚 nothing to hate. Trash comes from the earth too, and our self-important escapades are one possible way to live.

鈥淵es, the heart / is an easy machine,鈥� Barber reminds us in 鈥淭he History of Landscape,鈥澨�Country House鈥檚 first poem. But as she assures (or advises?) us in 鈥淐olor Fictionalism,鈥� its closing number, 鈥渢he act of make-believe differs / from self-deception.鈥�