Jacob’s Ladder by Rachel Barton, Reviewed by Dale Champlin

The poetry in Rachel Barton’s latest book, Jacob’s Ladder, takes the reader, rung-by-rung, up into a not-so-everyday world of wonder. It’s as if the poet views even the most mundane as an opportunity for reverence and pleasure. With incandescent phrases, many of these often-prose poems lead to home.

The first poem, also titled “Jacob’s Ladder,” provides an outline of what’s in store for the reader with the section headers that offer clues to the poet’s areas of exploration in the five parts of her collection.

1.
From the Dahlia Diaries: (gardening and nature)

2.
Altered States: (personal disclosures)

3.
Somewhere in Santa Fe: (fellow travelers)

4.
Phone call from Snake Hill: (family foibles)

5.
All roads lead to home: (the comfort of home)

In section one, Barton’s prose poem, “The Cloud People,” moves the reader into a mystical reverie: the Cloud People stride boldly down the mountainside to walk the valley floor. We continue through the blanket of fog which opens and closes again.

 “A Collected Consciousness,” a tercet poem similar in content to a cento, combines the philosophies of three famous poets: Mary Oliver, John Ashbery, and Jo Harjo before settling on Barton’s own conclusion:

as I grow older—our world collapsing in on itself
with a joyful cacophony,
a riot of color.

In “House-on-Fire,” Barton comes to terms with her present in three compelling sections. Initially, the poet says, I’m just a hyphen kind of girl. / I break in two what might be whole. She reflects on her childhood where books open into other worlds or into the murky / underpinnings of the human psyche. The poet’s intellectual curiosity protects her from a chaotic environment of empty storefronts, broken windows, / tainted water, and too few trees to get lost in.

 Finally, when the adult poet settles in the Pacific Northwest, amid lush bio-diversity, she gives the reader a warning about the catastrophe of global warming:

Sea level rises. Floods, fire, and grief
consume the geography of our earlier lives
or yesterday.

 The second group of poems, simply titled two, reads like series of poetic journal entries. In “The Body Speaks,” the poet states To be in a body is to feel aches and pains. She discusses the effects of COVID, parenthood, a glut of chocolate, back pain, chores, nightmares, exhaustion, and aging. This often-described landscape enthralls the reader with gleaming images and startling revelations such as section 5 of “Approaching the End of Day”:

I sleep in a dream of house on fire, grey smoke out every window
and my children, in grey clothes under grey blankets, slow to rally.

 In section three, Barton brings the subject of womanhood to the fore. She delves into what it means to be a caretaker and nurturer who also finds time and energy for reflection and exploration. She considers domestic chores as well as the pitfalls of being a young woman unwilling to be ensnared by unwelcome advances. For example, she writes in “Some of My Best Teachers were Dogs”:

He wore a very long hand-knit scarf and attempted to loop one end around my neck, as if to take possession. That was it for me. I ran.

 Barton is an editor as well as a writer. As such she finds herself editing her life, her garden, and her family history. And, in “Possible Evidence of Our Inter-Dimensionality,” she allows herself to dream:

Who knows what slipstream might open—
                   what portal might appear?
And what artifact shall I leave behind?

 The poetry in this section is also filled with portals of nature. Artichokes, blackroot, burdock, and seven-foot tall roses cause the poet to write in “a season’s density”:

creek-side a rush of snowmelt highwater
green-gold moss glow a sweater to leafless limbs

 Section four includes a tantalizing prose poem, “Tolstoy at the Deli”: a full-page poem written in a single sentence. By contrast, “If the Fox Went Out,” delights the reader with rhyme: When you come back, the red tail of your hair / will swish through the air like the scarf that you wear.

 Finally, in section five, the prose poem, “All in White,” touches upon the metaphysical as Barton ponders the evanescent “other side”:

Last night I hung out with the dead for a while and felt right at home. You were there enjoying the party which was quite a circus, though all in white.

The radiant ultimate poem of the collection, “While He is Away,” is a self-portrait of the poet-in-solitude where

Moss gathers in a scurry of small green rounds like
velvet, crowds to the edge of the roof, a few mounds still
tumbling down from the peak in a prolonged stop-action.

 Enjoy Rachel Barton’s Jacob’s Ladder the way you might savor a five-course meal:one tasty morsel at a time.