What I’m Reading: Approaching Ice by Elizabeth Bradfield
Approaching Ice by Elizabeth Bradfield (Persea Books) is a wonderful collection of poems about exploration of the polar regions from past to present, and reflections on why some are drawn to ice, danger, or spareness. You get a taste of one answer in the poem below, which focuses on some of what was saved when Ernest Shackleton failed to reach the South Pole, but, after ice destroyed his ship, heroically found a way to keep all the men alive. I like the range of explorers mentioned, and a poem about waiting wives, which includes the poet, and “Vicarious,” which is addressed to her absent partner: “You’re not worried/ about frostbite, snow/ glare, or crevasse. Not/ about a leopard seal/ beneath the ice you walk,/ stalking. Not madness.”
Exploration of the Arctic and Antarctic is a great subject for poems because of the mystery of both the ice and why people feel compelled to cross it, the themes of paring down, arrivals, and turnings back, and a rich often scientific vocabulary, which Elizabeth Bradfield beautifully explores. Here’s a taste:
Frank Hurley, Photographer on Shackleton's Endurance Expedition-1915
One by one he lay the glass negatives on ice
and squinted through their reversals. This one,
saved aside to be soldered into its tin box.
This one, smashed on the hard, white ground,
misgivings and reconsiderations
scattered and winking.
Yesterday, he'd broken into the cracking hull,
plunged shirtless into the slushy hold and fished out
what he could, heaved it up
onto the ice as Shackleton
tossed a gold watch, gold lighter, gold coins
onto the fissured surface before the makeshift camp,
telling the men they could take only two pounds
of unnecessary attachment from here. All of them
left something behind. But there, on the ground
that clenched and crushed their ship, they declared
what mattered most: silver nitrate
lyrics, spoken light.
Read the complete poem here.
For the Poetry Friday roundup, visit Toby Speed at The Writer's Armchair.