What You Don’t See Is What You Get : A Review of White Fence, by Phillip Sterling

What You Don’t See Is What You Get : A Review of White Fence

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White Fence: An Ekphrastic Collaboration Across Ten Images 
Alan Basting, Paul Deblinger, Marilyn Hedgpeth, Bruce Metge on photography by  Paula Siwek
​Window Press, 2024
https://windowpress.org/products/white-fence-an-ekphrastic-collaboration-across-ten-images

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For me, the most inspiring literary discussions are those, like symposia, in which a group of experts are provided a compelling question or issue and then each panelist responds in turn, not only to the topic but to each other. Such is one of the beauties of the book White Fence: An Ekphrastic Collaboration Across Ten Images (Window Press, 2024).

Consider Paula Siwek’s ten photographic works to be compelling questions and present one each week to four master poets for their consideration and reflection—that is, as prompts for poems generated by those images (in “ekphrastic” manner)—and you have the potential for the kind of transformative exchange, or artistry, that the best symposium is capable of. You have a White Fence.

What can be more compelling than a weathered privacy fence with one small slat missing, a narrow opening through which you can see in the distance a line of trees bordering a grassy field and, closer, the back of a metal folding chair? Or a black and white photo of a girl, her back to us, sitting in a patch of sunlight and shadow, her sandals off, a stick held upright in her right hand, seemingly unaware of the blurry “happy camping” activities going on in the distance? (It’s title Hoola Hoop, is alone worthy of contemplation and suggestion.) Or the shocking red brilliance of curly hair on a woman seemingly caught up in distant—swirling green and yellow—contemplations? Or a pictograph drawn or chalked on what appears to be urban cement, depicting several red-haired nudes (The Muses?) dancing in a circle, as if around an imaginary maypole? 

“Every picture tells a story,” Rod Stewart reminded us back in the day—a time in my life I don’t care to elaborate on here, except to acknowledge that even some fifty years later the song can stir up a dialectic of both difficult and pleasant memories, youthful moments of questioning and discovery, of love and loss, of solitude and society, of myth and memory. It was a time of conflicting attractions, during which I could find equally enticing an awkward, sweaty embrace of a stranger in a crowded high school gym or dancing alone, naked, “grotesquely / before my mirror” (as W.C. Williams’ describes in “Danse Russe”). That is, moments equally worthy of a story or a poem. And therein is yet another beauty of White Fence, for Siwek’s images have roused such reflections, mirror-like, of myth and memory in the four poets represented in the book: Alan Basting, Paul Deblinger, Marilyn Hedgpeth, and Bruce Metge. 

Deblinger in particular tends toward narrative in his poetry. Siwek’s Red Hair, for instance, stirs up the poet’s memory of watching Secretariat run in the Preakness—a flash of colour that so transcends shade or hue that it defines itself as uniquely thoroughbred: Big Red. (Red, in point of fact, is one of the unifying devices within White Fence; the color, as well as the word’s homophone, reappears in imagistic or metaphoric ambiguity—if not outright punning—throughout the book.) “There are two kinds of red for me now,” Deblinger concludes,

            all those ordinary reds
            and the red trying to tell me it belonged
            in my universe . . .   

A universe, as the other poets in White Fence will attest, that may be mythical and mysterious yet is nonetheless rooted in the immediacy (intimacy) of our dailiness, which, for the poet Marilyn Hedgpeth, means a life-long dedication to all things spiritual. Whereas Hedgpeth’s bio claims that she is a “retired” Minister of Word and Sacrament for the Presbyterian Church, her poetry continues a religious mission—to consider the manifestations of Being in the things and language of the world. In response to Siwek’s Initiation Triptych, an image that seems to meld forces of sky (lightning), water (ocean), and earth (body), Hedgpeth’s poem “Orenda” (a Haudenosaunee term defined as “the collective power of nature’s energies”) describes how the photograph seems to capture “heaven’s thunderbird” releasing its living energy from that trinity, “enraging the sea / its song a collective moan / our cry a prayer.”

Thus these poets remind us that the possibilities for knowledge (enlightenment) are endless, given the imagination, and yet our bodies have learned to speak in more sensory ways as well, as Alan Basting proves, in his more physically grounded approach to Siwek’s artistry. In his poem “Joining the Movement,” based upon Red Headed Dance, Basting begins with a simple description of the image itself: “The redheaded ladies began dancing / in circles. Light pooled under their feet.” Then he is drawn into it (a necessary pun, forgive me) and concludes:

            Each held arms out to touch sea mist,
            then fingertips of sisters before and behind them,

            a garland of naked females, each lovely
            and perfect: flowers of form and movement,

            petals so beautiful, I wished
            to bury my face in their fragrance.    
        
Bruce Metge’s poems also have a physical intimacy and narrative, and yet at times it is the image itself speaking—or a persona speaking out of the image—thus presenting a truly ekphrastic dialogue, the language of art. Reflecting on the book’s title image, the speaker in “Woods and Fences” first considers what the white fence is hiding or keeping the poet away from—the shelter of the trees, its welcome silence, the sun’s warmth—and how a neighbour’s desire to build a fence “for his privacy” transforms not only the woods (which the neighbor cuts to make lumber) but also the speaker’s memory of nature’s inherent pleasures. And yet, the narrow opening left “between two planks” appears to be intentional on the neighbor’s part, providing, perhaps, a glimpse of his human nature. “[P]erhaps to keep a view of the pines beyond,” writes Metge, “where true tranquility makes its home.”

Printed in a hardcover format (approx. 9 x 10 inches) with high quality paper and striking design, White Fence has all the aesthetic qualities and textures to make a wonderful coffee table book. (Or collector’s showcase: A deluxe, limited edition of 26 copies signed by the artists includes an original Siwek image not found in the volume.) But it would be a shame for White Fence to be treated as simply book art, that is, for us to admire it solely for its lovely images and presentation. White Fence is, after all, a book of gorgeous poetry, a book to spend time with, to return to over and again—as I did—stimulated not only by the questions the images raise, but by the answers the poets provide, as well as the compelling additional questions of artistry and humanity that the poems will continue to ask. 

Phillip Sterling

Phillip Sterling’s most recent books are Lessons in Geography: The Education of a Michigan Poet (essays/memoir, Cornerstone Press) and Local Congregation: Poems Uncollected 1985-2015 (Main Street Rag). He served as program coordinator and juror for WordView: Art Inspiring Art, an exhibit of artwork incorporating both visual and textual elements, presented by LowellArts (Lowell, MI) in 2022.