Ryan Eckes's Meditations Reach Into the Heart of Poiesis

Julia Madsen shares what she's reading in the form of five short reviews, starting with Philadelphia poet Ryan Eckes's collection, General Motors (Split Lip Press, 2019), for Tarpaulin Sky. "Eckes writes 'we're surviving, so there's a show. some lines i grow jealous of. bills flow thru my body, wet day dreams. you can have that line . . . the vast pastures of irrelevance. the pervasive motorization of petty individualisms,'" quotes Madsen. Continuing:

For Eckes, that we’re merely “surviving” means little in the face of institutionalized class oppression:

“we’re doing unpaid work in the courtroom while temple university’s lawyer attacks us for being poor. his tongue is a wet dollar. you have no power—it says so right here in this poem you didn’t write. therefore, you should have no power—you can just go home.”

These meditations on labor and struggle in the face of an illusory American Dream are singularly important and reach into the heart of poiesis. In doing so, they come to understand voice and creative agency as potent critiques against the powers intended to keep us at bay, and through this the book shows us a way within and among the failing systems we live under.

Madsen also looks at Brandi Homan's Burn Fortune, Marty Cain's Four Essays, and Evelyn Hampton's Famous Children and Famished Adults, all published in 2019; and In an I, by Popahna Brandes, 2015. Read all of the reviews here.