How Newness Sings: Mud Ajar

Review by Toti O’Brien

Hiram Larew’s fifth poetry collection was birthed during the pandemic, mostly (says the publisher’s note) during “outdoors rambles” rather than within homebound insularity. En plein air inspiration injects the verse with optimism, with a sense of hope that the awareness of collective hardship only makes keener, shinier.

Mud Ajar is a book of consummate wisdom derived from assiduous communality with nature, land, planet—wisdom, though, with no sadness attached, or with the kind of sadness that its very formulation dispels, soft melancholy transcended by its sheer enunciation.

We can’t be exactly sure of what mud ajar is, but we guess those fine cracks in the ground are the place, quoting Leonard Cohen, “where light gets in.” They are the openings through which seeds get into the ground, out of which the new growth comes forth.  

Larew’s brisk, lively nature poems are a synesthetic triumph. The five senses constantly interact, overstepping boundaries, happily exchanging their gifts. We hear the sounds of light in their infinite variations, we see the precise tint of a gesture, the shape of thoughts.

In “Conjure,” Larew seems to hand the reader a key:

Pretend that there’s a tune inside this line

Pretend there’s a wide-open humming window right there

or a whistle that’s weaving in and out

of each of these written trees –

[…]

Imagine that there’s a rain-drip background to these words

the springtime kind that must be touched

yes

with colors humming the pages’ corners

Imagine that

Most frequently, Larew’s nature comes to the page unfiltered—a moving, kaleidoscopic reflection constantly deconstructed into tiny particles let free to spin around, then rearranged to form ever-changing constellations. Rather than organized in separate frames, the world is caught in its perpetual vibration, and the perceiving-self tunes in, effortlessly aligning wavelengths. Therefore, outer and inner landscapes become one without need for metaphors. They simply coincide.

So, Larew’s impressionistic brush strokes paint an intricate, yet perfectly intuitive map of land, water, bird, wood, stone, simultaneously tracing a diagram of feelings evolving, an intimate cartography.

From “Chair:”

Like you

I am whoever

loses clouds

or sits on branches

[…]

Then I end up where I become

forest duff like you

or moss loving what’s skyward

From “This Where:”

The roots I sing inside myself

I’ve always longed to be

 

The leaning sheds that are my life

 

The straw I’ve gathered round

to family forth

and all these wings that marry me

Language is inflected both by the sensorial porousness, and by the suppleness of inside/outside borders. Its structure becomes accordingly loose. Rather than securely attached, words gravitate towards each other by laws of magnetic attraction. They dance, sometimes holding hands, sometimes simply orbiting within the same atmosphere.

Nouns, adjectives, and adverbs wear their respective roles with flexible grace, and nonchalantly navigate grammatical rules. Mostly, they express sheer meaning, with little concern for syntactic etiquette. Quintessentially, though, Larew’s is a poetry of verb.

From “Gathered Gate:”

This finally swung-out open swoop

the teasing pink of stems

that hover gully pools

as wanting will

or could be does

and always has.

Everything on the page is in motion, vitally propelled by momentum. All is action, progress, direction. All becomes. Experience is acquiring, never acquired.

From “Back to Me:”

What would I remember —

the touch of what I couldn’t say

the sounds I’ve always wanted

or the maps left unopened

The dynamic quality of the verse is so powerful, it overflows. It’s the exuberance of life unstoppable, claiming its right over obstacles, crises, chasms, or frontiers. Claiming it without fanfare, often sotto voce or invisibly, infrared, ultraviolet, in the nick of time, in the hiatus between now and now, in a nanosecond. Interstitial, as the title implies, and yet irresistible.

From “Bread in Hand:”

But even after all of this

farmers keep farming

for every one of us

They bend the sun

and raise the earth

each day for us

They round each rough

and tamp down this fears

for each of us

Yes after all of this