A Literary Add-a-Pearl Necklace: Oaken Transformations Brighton, Michigan

Abstract

38 World Literature Today photos : susan blackwell ramsey 5 poetry trails january–february 2013 • 39 A Literary Add-a-Pearl Necklace Oaken Transformations | Brighton, Michigan Susan Blackwell Ramsey Susan Blackwell Ramsey is a displaced bookseller in Kalamazoo whose first book, A Mind Like This, was just published by the University of Nebraska Press. Editorial note: For more information on Oaken Transformations, see www.miartwalk.com. I f not many poetry walks are National Wildlife Federation–designated wildlife refuges, even fewer have their trailhead in a maxillofacial surgeon’s waiting room. But just off the highway outside Brighton, Michigan, turning in at the sign for Dr. Fredric Bonine’s Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery also brings you to Oaken Transformations, a half-mile poetry and sculpture walk dedicated exclusively to artists with Michigan connections. No one is surprised to see you; the pleasant woman behind the desk just asks you to sign the guest book and take a map, then goes back to answering phones. Banks of daylilies and towering hydrangeas crowd a chipmunk-riddled brick courtyard, so the abrupt turn onto woodland trail is startling. The website describes Oaken Transformations as “post-glacial / post-industrial,” which pretty well brackets Michigan’s formative forces but doesn’t begin to describe the range of terrain here: the oval trail curves between two ponds, into forest, up a hill, through a meadow, and along a neighboring horse pasture. It feels much longer than half a mile, and measured in steps probably is, since side paths branch off to installations of poetry and sculpture. The sculpture is for sale and stays for only a year, while the poetry is carefully described as being there “indefinitely” (post-glacial / postindustrial doesn’t encourage illusions of permanence ). Not surprisingly, then, the sculpture and poetry aren’t linked. More surprising is how little of the poetry could be described as “nature poetry” or even poetry meant to be glanced at, read in passing. Robert Fanning’s “What Is Written on the Leaves,” for example, is thirty-eight long lines. On the other hand, it is one of the loveliest poems on the walk, with its incantatory let go: Of the season, let go. Of the ache to shape and make meaning let go. Of the hand in the dark, let go. Moss and worm, the awful gnaw, of the docked tongue, the rootclenched heart, let go . . . The poems are in white on signs the same green as the one telling you this is the exit for Brighton—surprising if you’re expecting bronze (remember, indefinitely, not permanently), but practical. The walk, after all, is new, a sort of literary add-a-pearl necklace, still growing, with room for dozens more. There’s a poem by a high school student, one by an elementary student. Some names you recognize; others you resolve to look up. One of the happiest installations, at the edge of a meadow of shoulder-high grasses, is Aaron McCollough’s “Threshold: The Lawn”: Before Edwin Budding in 1830 grass had to be managed with a scythe or with grazing beasts. The typical American yard was a scraggly garden of plantain, henbit, creeping pale, barberry and multiflora rose, a kind of meadow in miniature . Where it grew, grass tended to grow unchecked. It grew exceptionally tall. The beautiful uncut hair of graves. Thank you, Dr. Bonine. Kalamazoo, Michigan ...