‘A Submariner in the Pacific Dreams of Flowers’
— Reneé Bibby
I queued Christine Spillson’s poem almost as soon as it debuted at the Portland Review. Again and again, I returned to it, re-reading and then returning to my queue. I can’t say why, exactly, I waited to write about it; I was like the submariner in the poem: I had an exterior experience (the analytical work and logistics of crafting worthy commentary on a piece) and an internal experience with it (a treasure-hunter’s delight at discovering something rare and beautiful—a delicately-laced shell or an iridescent peacock feather) and those two experiences were not exactly the same.
The sweet and brightness of the submariner’s dreams are incongruent with the claustrophobic, dark, mathematics of his work in a way that mimics so many of our experiences, how we are able to find beauty, build worlds and hopes into words, while all around the world trembles. By the end of it, the submariner dreams of flowers and writes of them to someone he loves, and so too, now, I write about a great dream and send it to you all.