by Nicole Yurcaba
“Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote Robert Frost. It is too sad that Frost did not live to see the emergence of independent publisher Fence Books. He might have revised the line had he encountered the press and the imagistic, individualistic Ottoline Prize-winning collection Like You by Beth Roberts. Nonetheless, while the environmental focus inherent in the collection’s poems might have appealed to Robert Frost, the deviance from rhyme and structure may have not. However, Like You is not a collection for formalists. Like the dystopian climes, individualistic assertions, and poetic predictions its poems espouse, Like You is futuristic and anti-formalist, minimalist yet rebellious.
In fact, minimalism is on full display in Like You. Minimalism appears in both the collection’s forms and linguistics, and it creates intensity, because in each poem every word matters and carries emotional weight. “They Who Make the Quiet Quieter” is a prime example of this. It carries Robinson Jeffers-like images of owls which stroke “the midair of the ravine” and make “the quiet noon quieter.” The speaker employs personification so that mountains “stood before the stars and stopped their ears, their quiet calls.” This personification creates an emotional impact and environmental philosophy of which the Transcendentalists might envy, especially as what is human-made slowly, but severely, juxtaposes the natural world. A phone “called, buzzed, then vibrated” and “An extremely rare animal disappeared.” The speaker asserts, “We don’t know yet what it was, perhaps a salamander,” and these lines reveal an all-too cold-blooded truth about modernity: erasure and loss happen at an expense which cannot be measured, often at a pace which cannot be measured.
“The Bright Side” is a soft poem, one rife with an introspective, questioning voice. The individual exists within careful balance of the natural world, and even the poem’s structure mimics how quickly that balance can be disrupted. The third line of each stanza is constructed with only three to five words. In the first two stanzas, this final line acts like a stepping stone into the next poem. It also creates a hanging effect for readers, which contributes to the poem’s philosophical suspense.
“Like a Burning Understory” returns, stylistically and thematically, to the foundations established in “They Who Make the Quiet Quieter.” The poem begins rather dramatically: “It is hot in Florida, where 125 wildfires burn today and 2,000 since January.” One would perhaps like to believe this is merely an imagined apocalyptic scenario. Nonetheless, as climate change ravages all environments and not just vulnerable ones, the speaker’s assertion is an unfortunate reality, especially as intensifying droughts drive wildfires in places like Florida. The speaker designates “a whole population” as “the enemy.” However, the speaker not only critiques the collective ignorance contributing to the irreversible damage. They call for collective responsibility: “It will all become clear when we break for the spires and tall grass together. / An entire population called the enemy.” This collective responsibility, or lack of, also emerges in “Skull Remembers.”
“Skull Remembers” moves quickly. It is riddled with a haunting, Eliot-esque voice reminiscent of “The Waste Land.” A mysterious “they” is the poem’s focus. Lines like “Now is like / then, except without any others” create a distant, dystopian feel. The poem also bears some catchy, imagistic phrases such as “silky umbilical stream.” The repetition of the phrase “They smell” and the incorporation of other sensory words like “look” and “sound” involve readers even more. However, the namelessness in the poem distances readers, and lines like “They look like history upon introduction” draw a demarcation, a line of separation, which reminds readers of their place outside of the poem.
Like You is not a collection for those readers seeking a “light” read. The poems’ superficial simplicity deceives readers. Each poem requires careful unpacking, and readers must carefully lay out each word, each line, each stanza and contemplate them. When they do, they see that Like You proves itself a philosophical treasure trove of minimalist proportions.
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian (Hutsul/Lemko) American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.
