What We’re Reading: Sage Cohen

Like the Heart, the World by Sage Cohen (Queen of Wands Press, 2007)

I just got back into town from a week long vacation in Portland. I used the time to hike through all of the beautiful areas surrounding Portland, take in the rough and gorgeous Oregon coast, eat a lot of fancy food at ridiculously delicious restaurants, and yes — browse a couple bookstores. I happened upon this poetry collection in a section for local Portland writers, and knew I had something to review for this week after reading this line from “Sweetened Water Farm, 1989”:  “Some landscapes make you want to leave your life behind.” While I’m not quite ready to leave my Minneapple, I was blown away by the beauty of the Portland area, and Cohen’s debut collection is the perfect memento to remember my experience by.

Like the Heart, the World is split into sections by city: New York first, then San Francisco, and, finally, Portland. Her New York poems are filled with a sense of not belonging, while her San Francisco poems ooze with wonder and self-reflection. Portland is a place of awareness, of acceptance. Each of these places bring out a period of grief and renewal for the speaker, moving along the phases as she moves geographically.

Cohen’s writing style is straight, to the point, with short sentences that get right to the heart of it (although sometimes cause friction in the poem’s rhythm). She uses first names for the people she talks about in her poems, creating a very conversational and personal tone. And the subjects are wholly personal, too: pregnancy, a crumbling marriage/relationship, belonging. Her approach is direct, and because of that, all the more poignant, such as in the poem, “The Grief of the Violin”:

You moved through me
in the key of E.

The grief of the violin must be great.
Centuries of symphony

that can’t be saved, played only
to disperse into individual notes.

Today you are a C. Bright and clean,
the knife with which I cut

my apple, the child on the swing.
I play you high and low,

but the note does not sustain.

There are other moments, especially in the Portland section, where Cohen’s writing heaves with a sense of devil-may-care attitude. She abandons her short punctuated sentences for something more earthy and humble. Every word still counts, but the style is more lyrical, such as in “Barn” from the Portland section:

Throw your shoulder
into the weight
of door lay down
your human
condition roll in
the sweet hay
of horse secrets
feast
on the nothing
you know

That last line of “you know” leaves the reader hanging in a way that Cohen doesn’t allow in the first half of the book. The last section on Portland also includes some longer prose poems, whereas the previous sections do not. All of this combined, Portland is a section of self-acceptance with a few glimmers of hope for the future.

Cohen is familiar with the act of writing, and has written multiple books on the craft, such as The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write More and Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry. After reading her poetry before her writerly advice, I’m interested to see what she suggests to her fellow writers in terms of approach.

Are there other books you can think of that are organized by geographic location? What does this physical setting add (or take away) from the writing? Here’s a writing prompt for you: write a poem based specifically on a city or state park or whatever, and see what it brings up for you.