Robin Behn: Eclectic / Electric Poetry

Many readers and poets may recall what Emily Dickinson wrote about how she knew good poetry.

Recently when I read the poetry of Robin Behn, I felt as though I stood at the edge of the Mighty Niagara Falls on a bitter, windy Winter afternoon with the opaque glare of the sun shining behind clouds. The mist prickled my cold face, and the roar of the thundering water rumbled in my ears. The moment of electric, the seconds of eclectic energy surged my being: that's how I know I've read a good poem.

Read, for example, the following few lines:

Glove

The story of the life of hesitation.
Or.
The story of the life of crash and burn.

The body in which the life is sheathed
in either story
is like a bedtime glove

put on to aid
the absorption of unguents
but found in shreds at daybreak

as if it had been peeled from the windshield
of a yellow car, a bandage
furred by frost, or milk.

I don't know which destiny,
the one of frost or milk,
takes the most desiring or the longest path to come to.

To discover, read more at http://www.litline.org/Spoon/Issues/PDF/...

For me, the first line initially creates the image of stutter, sputter, (like cold mist spray as I walk alongside Niagara). Many readers may then identify with doubts or unexpected obstacles that halt the pursuit of a dream or even a practical goal like going to work or school.

The third line rushes at readers (like the thrust of wild, white river water into the Niagara gorge). Readers easily identify with the fast pace of living, cramming for tests, racing to leave the children at tee ball practice and a soccer game. Perhaps it's the speed of the keys clicking a line of poetry before the image fades from the mind. The deft placement of these lines one after the other offers readers a fresh paradox.

The word sheathed in the first line of the second stanza scrapes within my mind's ear! In addition, the unexpected trade of bedtime story to bedtime glove presents readers with irony of life.

The imagery in the next two stanzas brings readers up close (fast) to the hurts and wounds of life. Sometimes those accidents are small like scraped elbows, sprained shoulder, or broken bones. Other times the wounds are deeper into the flesh, into the spirit.

The implication that destiny is either milk or frost symbolizes the harshness yet nurturing aspects one encounters living life.

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