Where Grasses Bend Poems from Portland to Steens Mountain in the time of Plagues by Mimi German (2023: Eyepublishewe, 2023, San Francisco, First Edition)

Available at: https://www.abebooks.co.uk

What is the point of poetry? The question any poetry lover has heard many times from the ‘sensible’ general public who might argue that you cannot make money, nobody understands it anyway… The arguments against poetry are almost as old as civilization, going back to Plato. However, Mimi German answers all these arguments beautifully with her powerful collection of poems Where Grasses Bend: Poems from Portland to Steen Mountain in the time of Plagues (2023: Eyepublishewe, San Francisco).

‘in the shadows of a new york hospital/rows of refrigerated trucks squeeze/side by side like rotting lemons/to shelve the dead,’ she writes in ‘As They Count The Dead’ (p. 5). One of the opening poems hits you with the mighty and uncompromising directness of images and forces you to relive the traumatic years of the Covid-19 global pandemic, reliving it from the safety of distance of time that has passed since.

As we read through the poems, death is ever-present: ‘i’m losing all my leaves

soon   i will resemble a dead weed’  (Resembling A Dead Weed; p. 10). So is emptiness and loss:

‘…and over crags of this monumental divide
longing screeches through empty canyons
where once a jackal walked
where once a vulture swooped
through the red veins of the valley under the gaze
of yellow asters
the path curves winding upstream
in the white waters rafting across my body’ 
(Where Once A Jackal Walked, p. 18)

In another poem, Mimi asks if ‘can one die by longing/or by letting go of air’ (In June I Have Only Questions, p. 22). The longing for normalcy, intimacy, other human beings, the hopelessness of the situation is palpable. The words paint the apocalyptic world of recent years, yet, there are glimmers of hope as the poet gets closer to nature throughout her journey, on which she has invited us.

Part II bears witness to the devastating consequences of the pandemic, the poverty, the collective depression felt by the nation. In Apparition On A Park Bench (p. 48), the author contrasts ‘the fancy restaurant/serving up cocktailed delusions’ with a homeless person on a park bench opposite the restaurant ‘inside the red parka/there was no face/just an angled shadow’.

There is sand, cracked bricks, coffee is served with rain, ‘unknitted and frayed’ America; the imagery allows no compromise and the astute eye of the poet aptly names everything that she sees with a mesmerizing precision. Mimi German understands very well that a task of a good poetry is to find the words where others fail to verbalize their feelings. There is no place for decorating over the patches of mould on the walls, hiding cracks behind a new piece of furniture…

She exposes us, forces us to face the truth, but she also offers a solution. As we follow Mimi to the last part of the collection, her journey literally and metaphorically, her re-discovery and re-connection with the world around her:

‘they say nothing 
is out here              that here
is the middle    

          of nowhere   
but here
exactly     here  
you find your     where 
on earth
your   who   you are    your    you’

(Wilderness, p. 74)

Her new life brings new challenges like removing ‘a dead coyote off the middle of the road’ (p. 84, Begging Call). She is surrounded by animals and plants that become part of every-day reality, so are the ghosts that appear in several poems. The moments of intimacy between Mimi and her partner are explored. The hopelessness, death, devastation of the first two parts are satisfyingly resolved in the third. We are taken on a hero’s journey that results in a complete rebirth, and the dramatic arc is underpinned by changing seasons. In her final poem, Mimi German sits in the winter with all the ghosts of the desert, keeping warm and writing more poetry.

I am personally excited to see more from this talented poet. The meticulous exploration of the world around her, the craftsmanship she puts into her poems, how she simultaneously manages to remain personal, intimate, is all impressive. Mimi tells a compelling personal story in just over hundred pages, fully utilising another superpower of poetry: economy of expression.