The Infinite Field by Alice Templeton

The Infinite Field brought me to a new understanding of what it means to find one’s bearings. The phrase is not just a statement of where Alice Templeton stands but of how each of us is located in relationship to people, places, and time. “Evening Song,” the first poem in the collection, begins Souls are en route, which hints at how difficult that task will be, with the contemporary view that the world, down to its smallest particles, is in constant motion.

In Berkeley, California, a daughter of farmland prepares to return home to the world of sweet tea and sweet potatoes, aware that it will be temporary. Old hymns, memories of horses, a drive through Eden in August, and burial rites will carry her back to Belvedere, Tennessee. In “Homing,” the last poem in this section,

I cannot deny
the muscle we share, dog,
river,
even wrench. That burnish,
that hunger,
this way of belonging.

We are asked to reflect on a series of truths the poet learned growing up in the South, Fundamental: / Held or lost, beauty / causes an unavoidable swerve…. Beauty is one of many factors that alter concepts as fundamental as a sense of home.

As Templeton attempts a self-portrait in words, she draws us closer. In “She” the scene is set: A boathouse and evening light, reflections and echoes. It will lead her to focus on memories of childhood and youth, which include play with her brothers, spiritual experiences, and sexual awareness. She leaves behind the quiet child and becomes a witness to the animal cries of a suffering woman in a city park as the scene shifts from the country to Memphis in the 1960s and 70s, where Time was stalled / in the shadow of ’68. Water, sometimes dark but never still, acts as a mirror.

In the service of establishing the poet’s bearings, “Shipping Out, Then and Now” brushes against history in the telling of a father’s service in World War II, then fast-forwards to a health care facility where:

. . . I couldn’t fix
the facts—you sat in your sweet
manure, waiting—and I swerved
            as girls in green swept
and served….

In other pieces, events at Hotel Lorraine and its disintegration provide further historical markers. establishing context and compass points.

. . . The Lorraine had sunk
from Green Book to brothel
and squat        an unwashed museum
of need

We cannot fix facts. We cannot go back to the past and change what has occurred to create new outcomes. Neither can we insist that reporting or recording events can produce one true account of what happened.

Fundamental: Held or lost, beauty causes an unavoidable swerve

Works of art also provide touchstones. In “Approaching Arbus’s Boy” on the artist’s Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962, Templeton describes the central player in the photograph:

his frown
will
burst
                        his claw  
                                    will
                                                pull
                                                the pin—

Unmoored, even the young are tempted to obliterate light. Wyeth’s Christina’s World also make an appearance in two poems, which bookend the section that defines the infinite field of the book’s title.

Add the orientation of text on the page to this mix. By providing fixed rules and the complexity of repetition, forms (villanelle, sestina, prose poem) provide containers for sorrow. Other poems sway or dance along the page. Some of the most intense ones push against the margins, threaten to break through them.  

Templeton provides a steady, experienced guide to accompany us through her experiences. I cannot read these poems without hearing the echoes of longing in Robert Duncan’s “Often I Am Permitted to Return to the Meadow.”  And I am glad Alice Templeton has welcomed me to her infinite field.

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Trina Gaynon’s poems have been recently published in Poetry East and Presence. More can be found in The Grace of Oregon Rain, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, other anthologies, numerous journals, and a chapbook, An Alphabet of Romance from Finishing Line. She is a graduate of the University of San Francisco’s Master’s Program in creative writing and a past volunteer for literacy programs in local libraries, as well as WriteGirl in Los Angeles. She currently leads a poetry group at Senior Studies Institute in Portland. Her book Quince, Rose, Grace of God from Fernwood Press was recently released. www.amusebouche-poetry.com.