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Territory of Enchantment: Review of Gillian Cummings鈥檚聽The Owl was a Baker鈥檚 Daughter

by Amie Whittemore

搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听The Owl was a Baker鈥檚 Daughter聽by Gillian Cummings (The Center for Literary Publishing, Colorado State University, 2018), winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Gillian Cummings鈥檚 second full-length collection,听The Owl was a Baker鈥檚 Daughter, is many things鈥攂eautiful and musical, tender and quietly daring鈥攂ut perhaps its most dominant feature is that it is bewildering. Her poems, which are haunted by聽贬补尘濒别迟鈥�s Ophelia (the title of the collection is one of Ophelia鈥檚 lines) and, more broadly, by the habits of mind Ophelia鈥檚 character evokes, are bewildering the way prayer is: these poems sing toward聽蝉辞尘别迟丑颈苍驳鈥�but what? I鈥檒l admit I鈥檓 not sure, which left me perplexed in pleasing and frustrating ways.

Emilia Phillips references聽the writer Fanny Howe鈥檚 work with perplexing poetry in her essay, "." Howe鈥檚 lecture excerpt, 鈥�,鈥澛爄s itself a confounding text. In it she ascribes, 鈥淸w]eakness, fluidity, concealment, and solitude,鈥� as qualities of bewilderment, as they 鈥渇ind their usual place in the dream world, where the sleeping witness finally feels safe enough to lie down in mystery.鈥澛燙ummings鈥檚 poems certainly 鈥渓ie down in mystery,鈥� and seem to wake there too. Despite being split into four sections, there is no sense of forward narrative motion; the sections, instead, seem to indicate a shift in perspective and oscillations in form: sections I and III are composed largely of 鈥渘ear-sonnets,鈥� and II and IV feature prose poems. All of the poems are intensely lyrical and mystical; Cummings鈥檚 influences as a Zen Buddhist practitioner and her inspirations from several Buddhist sutras shine throughout.

鈥淥f Bubbles and Milk鈥� is a poem from the first section that begins,

聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 The littlenesses start littling in pink,
聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 white, yellow. She knows dandelion,
聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 the weed one, the one not supposed to be,
聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 as she is not.

The opening sentences of this poem exemplify Cummings鈥檚 style, which features playful neologisms (鈥渓ittling鈥� is just one that darts through the collection), rich music, (all those short聽i聽sounds with聽s-sounds聽slithering around them), and, yes, bewilderment: what are "littlenesses"? Who is this "she"? It doesn鈥檛 feel quite right to say the she in these poems is Ophelia, exactly, nor a stand-in for the speaker; in several poems a girl-collective, the 鈥淢oon-Girls,鈥� are identified and the聽she聽might be one of these girls who are 鈥渁fraid of the hunter鈥檚 moon, / its over-bite on the dark bread of memory, / how love is what leaves do to flame鈥� (鈥淢oon-Girls of the Burning Barn, 2鈥�).

The gravity that grounds these poems is that of paradox; to return to Howe, 鈥淏ewilderment is an enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability.聽It cracks open the dialectic and sees myriads all at once.鈥� Thus, Cummings makes regular use of the prefix聽un-聽to crack open dialectics of being and knowing. In 鈥淟ittle Heavenling,鈥� for instance, 鈥渟he wants Jesus not to have chaliced / so no stumble and slur to unbless / the thousandfold names of God.鈥� Later in the poem, the speaker shifts to the imperative, marked by italics: 鈥�Notice nothing, little heavenling, small hellborn, / notice not how hardness softens by the soft, a rift / mends when what鈥檚 unwearing fits unworn.鈥澛�Here, we are called to notice聽nothing聽and to hold what is blessed and unblessed, worn and unworn at once through those reversing prefixes. The poem invites us to be unmoored, thus mooring us鈥攖o what? I can鈥檛 claim to know with certainty鈥攊ndeed, the poems seem to nurture uncertainty鈥攂ut the reach of the book is ever outward: toward God, but also to the wind, the trees, to the wisdoms and naivet茅 of childhood. If these are poems that flitter out of Ophelia鈥檚 madnesses, they seem to suggest sanity is paradoxical, that only a branching mind, one that seeks its own vastness and multiplicity can survive the fraught complexity of being alive.

This idea is drawn out in one of the poems in Section III, 鈥淚n the Red Night Clouds.鈥� Here, the speaker instructs us: 鈥淟ook at anything long / and it will beat in the pulse of your blood.鈥� Then, later, 鈥淟ook longer still and all dissolves: one color, / one moon, all earth, red as love, red as living.鈥� In moments like these, Cummings鈥檚 poems lift into the mystical, urging us beyond our secular understanding of life.

As Shunryu Suzuki writes in聽Zen Mind, Beginner鈥檚 Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice, 鈥渢he purpose of studying Buddhism is to study ourselves and to forget ourselves. When we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of the big existence, or reality itself.鈥澛營ndeed, forgetting and remembering are repeating motifs in聽The Owl was a Baker鈥檚 Daughter, and dissolving the difference between these two are part of what these poems accomplish: when you are fully in the poem, you are asked to forget yourself, your desires for clarity, and remember that a poem is not, first and foremost, an informational text: it is a mutiny, a preponderance, a tooth and its ache, a 鈥渞aindrop / fallen on a flock of banking starlings鈥� (from 鈥淥f Bubbles and Milk鈥�). Cummings鈥檚 poems rise above their occasional reliance on abstraction and flirtations with twee language; rather, it is through her surprising syntax and daring juxtapositions, we enter into what Howe might call the 鈥渦nresolvable鈥� territory of enchantment, the beguiling place where madness and sanity show up wearing the same clothes, trying out the same dance moves.