‘Unstable Systems’
— Hannah Cohen
When I was smaller than everything, nothing was easier
My normal practice of finding poems to write about involves serious scrolling through an endless Twitter feed of magazines and memes, so when I saw a fellow poet retweet the inaugural issue of Gold Wake Live, I was happy to find two poems by heavy-hitter Mary Biddinger. Her poem ‘Unstable Systems’ at first read appears logical, systematic even. However, as the speaker presents “a lecture titled / “Damn It, Sometimes You Have to Leave Your City,” the real error is found in their human audience, some “too in love to listen”.
With a compact, crowded appearance and mostly even lines, the mention of words such as “floating necklaces” and “boxwoods” conflict with all the “diagrams” and “math”—things that shouldn’t be unstable or uncertain. No matter where we are in life, if we’re walking down a city street enjoying its mess, or out in some open country with puffy clouds, ‘Unstable Systems’ is a poem worth returning to.