Reading Groups: Rachel Mannheimer
A discussion thread for Rachel Mannheimer's "Earth Room"
Dear Readers,
Guided Poetry Book Groups are my new offering: facilitated sessions for committed poetry readers and writers who wish to engage in a practice of reading more deeply, creatively, and intentionally.
Each month, I guide small groups through a close reading of a current book of poetry—books that are overlooked and underrated; books that have something important to tell us about what it is to be alive today.
This brief post is a catalyst for discussion for Rachel Mannheimer’s Earth Room. This thread is a place for members of the reading group to answer the questions I’ve posed and to pose questions of their own. And though it’s intended for members of the reading group, I welcome comments from anyone committed to a deeper, more intentional reading of this important book.
I’m including a few reflections below to kick us off.
I’m going to announce the next round of reading groups in late October. Send me an email if you’d like to be notified when registration opens for the January 2023 cycle.
Sean
Discussion Prompt: Earth Room
Rachel Mannheimer’s Earth Room is a narrative book-length poem which both evokes a transitory orbit and a passionate solitude. Earth Room evokes 47 places in its itinerary: Los Angeles, Providence, Tempelhof, the speaker’s car in Montana, Beacon, Berlin, Wuppertal, Tempelhof again, and back to Berlin. Some of the places repeat.
How does Mannheimer use these places to show transformation of the self?
Tell us about a time when you noticed your sense of self changing in relationship to place.
What devices does Mannheimer use to allow the poems stand on their own, yet cohere to form a book-length narrative?
Discuss.
I couldn't quite keep up tonight in terms of getting my hand raised in time to contribute to a certain line of discussion, but as usual, I found myself appreciating the book even more than I already did by the time we closed.
Some thoughts I had during the discussion:
—often when poetry isn't immediately lyrical/musical (in the way we tend to think of Poetry), it's easy to dismiss it or describe it as "detached" but I think here, while it definitely has a detached atmosphere, it feels so purposeful that it's almost intimate, as if the speaker is showing us something about her and her inner life by doing so.
—related to that, she reserved her level of detail for the sections that were about the installations and performances, describing, as someone mentioned, in an ekphrastic way, almost pure description, while also sharing with us, as if a museum tour guide, some of the historical backgrounds of the artist and/or the pieces themselves. She forges relationship with the reader this way, I think, like she wants to say: look, look at what I can't stop looking at, or thinking about.
—the most intimate things in her life we only get bits of, as talked about in class, her mother's death, her boyfriend's illness (is it physical or psychological/mental, or both? is one causing the other?); in that way that what we notice says so much about who we are as creatures/human, the relaying of information, in that journalistic sense, is almost a kindness. By creating a clear image, she's allowing us to soak in the "facts" of it all.
—the little haunts we get of her mother's death and Chris's illness (two of the several personal threads just as examples) carry so much more emotion as they permeate the scenes/poems that come after and accumulate as we go forward
—in that way, I think there is an arc, or maybe a kind of circular one or a spiral (not a downward one)
—a note on the reading experience: I found myself reading each poem with all the accumulation that came before it, while also trying to imagine that I'd come upon the poem without having read any of the others (though she does call it, in the McSweeney's conversation, a book-length poem). It was interesting to frame the poems that way; some held up more than others.
—and, lastly, her withholding of personal information, the elusive way she referred to her partner and other people in her life, even her Jewishness and her Alaska-ness, is what pulled me through the book... wanting more reveal, and there's always a little tiny bit more.
Looking forward to next book,
LD
A poem I'm sharing based on the prompts Sean gave us off of the Mannheimer book.
PUTTING MY POEM INSPIRED BY THE MANNHEIMER PROMPT HERE (SEAN, PLEASE MOVE IT IF THIS ISN’T THE RIGHT SPOT! AND FELLOW GROUP MEMBERS, I WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK AND PLEASE POST YOUR OWN WORK TOO!)
Lake Owasso
The forked road ended where the railroad went
closer to Canada than the Gulf,
marshy enough for herons and gulls.
From their inlet, it would open to a larger lake
fed by invisible streams.
Their coffee was so lousy you had to bring your own supplies,
and then again mom liked too much mayonnaise
in her spreads at cocktail hour eighty pounds ago when she liked to eat.
Why would anyone share their feelings like that, dad asked me last time
when What Can Be Held Briefly came up.
You could go out on their porch in the summer
until the mosquitoes came out
and watch John throw sticks for Lena to fetch
or as Bud did before he died—
wrecking the plans for tending to mom while dad napped.
Through long and drifting winters, with snowplows and shovels,
Bud would have been there and take mom shopping.
He kept his own company, dog, hotplate, TV,
even as he whispered about world revolution,
what with Karen and John down the stairs and all, leading.
Karen always cared so much for the helpless.
I always wondered how to manage silence.
The lake was nearly always calm,
especially at dusk.
Lena adjusted like the waves
that churn up so briefly and then subside.
–Diane L. Redleaf, posted 10-7-22