The Surface of the Lit World by Shane Seely

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Surface of the Lit World by Shane Seely Carol Niederlander Shane Seely. The Surface of the Lit World. Ohio University Press, 2015. J. M. W. Turner's painting, Shade and Darkness, cover art for Shane Seely's The Surface of the Lit World, dramatically introduces the poems that follow. Turner's painting shows a landscape moving into darkness before Noah's flood, but his companion work, Light and Colour, depicts a world beginning again the next day in an overwhelming blaze of light. Seely's book, winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, explores both darkness and light, with unobtrusive references to both throughout. The poems are engaging, made especially so by shifts of tone and language from the everyday to the almost operatic, as well as by reference to myth, artwork, and contemporary news stories. His thoughtful portrayal of the paradoxical, sometimes deadly, nature of the world and human character conveys a mature acceptance of difficult double realities. In the opening poem, "Descent," the speaker recalls nights when as a boy he was charged with taking bags of trash down a long, dark driveway to the road. He can see his parents "in the warm light of the kitchen window," but the curving path to the road takes him past the illumination of an outdoor lamp and into darkness. It's scary there: The mailbox had a ghoulish face and every tree had hands. Behindthe boxwood, something coughed and snarled. A ghostsighed into the wind and kicked a stone that clattered out ahead,as if in warning of the dangers waiting where the drivewaymet the road. And so I raised my lone defense,the lone defense of children sunk in darkness everywhere:I sang. He sings "against all lurking terrors," pitching his "boy's falsetto against the black glass of rising night / as if to crack it, as if to punch a gap that light might run through." He sings until he can dump the bags, then turns to face "the path, the silent tees, the surface of the lit world"—singing upon his return as well, "wary of the fate of those who look behind." His singing, the memory of that lighted room, and his own perseverance bring him home. But even family life is not without danger, as poems centered on father-son relationships attest. In "The Fledged Boy," a retelling of the Icarus myth, a child born with feathers along his arms (like his father, although both hide it) cannot refuse to fly from their tower when his father commands it. That "the sun glowed / like a candled egg in the single window / of our cell" seems a good omen but is not. The boy reveals his magnificent wings: "My father looked at them, and / I could see that he was proud. / He asked if I knew what I needed / to do. I told him the truth, that I did." The ending is ambiguous. Did the boy really think he knew how to fly without getting too near the sun? Or did some part of him know that he must destroy himself? In "Isaac's Lament," the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is told from the son's point of view. The father draws his knife: "I watched the oiled blade /glint against the sun, and I—who would have burned / / himself alive to please this man—I smiled." The father's eyes grow "wild / with awful love." Then comes another ambiguous ending: "My reprieve came then, / unbinding me from him. I lived instead." A number of poems responding to newspaper articles describe the intrusion of creatures that both frighten and inspire. One is the "Swamp King of Kalispell," a stag with enormous antlers thriving in a suburban neighborhood until his "ragged carcass" is found, "torn by bears and ravens till the rib cage/ glistened." Both neighbors and hunters bemoan the death of the magnificent animal: "Remember the Swamp King / the mayor said, and we all swore we would." But "each of us, in some dark hollow of his heart / was relieved to see you lying there, all tattered skin / and mouse-gnawed bone, lying there / in a form...