To Light Out by Karen Weiser
Karen Weiser prefaces her collection of poems detailing the driving force behind their creation. She uses the philosophical writings of Emanuel Swedenborg to set her poems inside a framework of conversations with angels and the power of creation. Swedenborg was interested in the achievement of a “perfect spiritual language.” Weiser’s poems reflect this concern of figuring out how to express oneself in a language that transcends the understanding or capabilities of speech. She began writing these poems to travel inward, to the center of her own body where she carried a child. Her pregnancy inspired her to listen to the interference inside her body, to hear the static of what Weiser describes as her unborn child’s signal. These poems are a message being transmitted from inside to the world.
The book is divided into three sections, each begins with a pair of quotations that are set so they appear to be in dialogue with one another. These quotations set up the major philosophical question buried inside each of the poems in the section. The first section is a questioning of language and the limits of communication. The second is the imagining and conceiving of something that cannot or has not yet been seen or experienced. And the final section is about creation, more specifically, the creation of the invisible.
Throughout the book, Weiser’s poems echo one another with similar words appearing and reappearing. The poems are set in a very specific order, sometimes with two poems interacting with one another and recycling fragments of lines or words. The repetitions are intentional and well placed, so that the recycled pieces stand out in a new way, serving a new purpose. Typically the poems are divided into equal length stanzas, but occasionally, the poems take the shape of a single stanza that overflows with ideas. The philosophical nature of Karen Weiser’s subject is well suited to the strong structure provided by even stanzas. The structure allows the ideas to speak and resonate slowly and does not distract from the message of the poem.
Weiser’s poems address an unknown ‘you’ that is not specific or particularly emotional in its use. The ‘you’ in the poems is the broader philosophical ‘you’ of the world. At times some of the poems can feel vague and not direct enough to elicit strong feeling, but these same poems are also directed to a higher level of thought than emotion. Weiser’s language use is beautiful and prompts thought and wonder. She is not explicit and asks the reader to pause a moment and question the idea embedded in the words.
The poem bearing the same title as the book, “To Light Out” is a joyous expression of the power of creation:
To light out is to burst into young legs
toward an opening in the newly made wild
toward the stain of gold machines we have set in motion
around the curtain of bad weather
The poem not only suggests motion, it creates motion with active images and the repetition of ‘toward.’ Literally, the first stanza is a vivid description of birth, but it transcends the concrete act of birth to develop the incredible potential of this birth-- it is a whole new world to this being. Some of the most powerful lines in the collection conclude the poem “To Light Out:”
an endlessly opening frontier of rapid sketches
pressed between the pages of knowing
In these lines, Weiser is unveiling the unformed path before us that is ours to sketch and to know.
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