Rag Cosmology by Erin Robinsong

Erin Robinsong’s debut poetry collection is an inexplicable dive into the deep end of language. Robinsong’s effort to explore nature in a way intensely unlike any other poet creates surreal landscapes where trees are cloudlike, coral reefs are erotic, and swans beat down police with their wings. Robinsong’s work addresses the urban dweller’s detachment from nature not by setting nature apart, but by asking the (presumably) detached reader the question do you think our bodies are the only way / we get to be here? The body is not detached from nature; it is here, in it, at all times. In an interview for Open Book, Robinsong says I think cities exist in the natural world as much as forests do. It is as difficult to imagine a world without cities as it is to imagine one without forests, and she knows this. In response, Robinsong offers a refreshing break from the Romantic and problematic notion of an unknown/unattached/undiscovered landscape. She writes:

I was 20, I was a polyrhythmic
rugrat noticing there is nothing that isn’t
moving

This, to me, is the effect of her work—it draws attention to a direct and inherently human connection to life, and the constant movement of it within and around us. There is no such thing as stopping in Robinsong’s world. Undulating to and fro, her poems often end in half-finished thoughts or even with a note stating the poem is (ongoing).

Of course, this can be difficult to come to terms with, knowing that the world will never simply cease to be despite how endangered it is. In ‘Vibration Desks,’ Robinsong describes being overwhelmed by her surroundings:

in a distracted century I’ve
taken a walk it’s almost
hallucinogenic the things I’ve seen
I’ve seen tree bark
I’ve seen clouds darkening
I’ve seen a woman speak into a rectangle

The fragmented, almost feverish writing in this long poem reflects the anxiety felt by living between environments, where one hundred year old trees exist alongside telephone poles and the latest electric car. This poem, like many others, seems to be running out of breath, in a hurry, or otherwise caught up in chasing or being chased. This tangible aspect of her writing is due in part to Robinsong’s ability to play with the visual nature of poetry by spreading the words across a page, breaking them in twos or threes, and even flipping letters onto their side or upside down. This is a reading experience that moves the eye, the hand, the book itself.

In this way, there is something jarring about Robinsong’s writing, as the fragments of sentences/thought create surreal images of a broken landscape. Not much is personified, and there are human bodies present, of course, but so lost in the language of her poetry are they that it can be difficult to tell whether the poem is about a tree or a person. Either way, it is easy to get lost in Robinsong’s vision of our world. My favourite was the lighter, almost playful poem ‘The Woods,’ a romantic gesture (to a partner? to the woods themselves?) that plays with the ear of language by finishing with the thought:

would always

              pine       fir

                            yew

I too pine for a landscape where nothing is in danger of becoming fragmented or foreclosing, where the thin line between endangered and extinct is a concern of the past. Robinsong’s poetry is not here to assuage fears of environmental crisis; rather, its intent is to make one realize that one is living in the midst of one.

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