The long-form poem is not one that seems to appear very often among a backdrop of small, concise, tightly crafted poems that embody much of the contemporary landscape. In Practice On Mountains, David Bartone’s debut collection of poems and winner of the 2013 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, he seems to find a meeting place for the old-fashioned long-form and the kind of bounding from one idea to the next that exists largely in newer poetry. The book-length poem follows the genesis and ultimate downfall of the speaker’s relationship with a married woman. Split into ten sections with a prologue, each part represents various stages of the relationship and the speaker’s consequent reflections on his character as a result of the affair. Bartone brings together the personal romantic experiences of the speaker with nods to literary figures like Pound, Thoreau, Li Po, and Byron. In this way, he directly connects who he’s reading with what he’s writing.
The syntax, at times, appears convoluted, mimicking the dizzying effects of love and infatuation, especially a love that carries obstacles. Many lines often read as if they’ve been plucked directly from Bartone’s notebook, which further places us in the private life of the writer. The tone takes on many different faces, shifting from somber to playful to self-referential. The speaker also periodically addresses the reader in an almost frantic way to connect (“I am trying to inhabit you, reader, but it sure seems like I am trying to revile you… You will have to forgive me if for several pages this hasn’t involved you… You are here with me. For or against will.”). A smattering of ellipses and etcetera pepper the collection as well, signs of the disjointed yet forward-moving quality of the work.
This idea of disjointedness yet having the desire for cohesion ties directly back to being involved in a problematic relationship. Such an arrangement inevitably prompts a desire for control and certainty, which the speaker frequently speaks to (“If only I can control the outcome, if only I can control everything.”). Much of the sentences come in the form of commands, as if in writing this way, the speaker can gain more authority and stability in his life.
Although the collection’s range of topics moves beyond the affair itself, Bartone spends much of it contemplating the nature of their rocky intimacy:
“Perhaps this will change into something we can love.”
“She needs to see if she can live without me.”
“The air’s unkind bruise, the separation”
“Call this that ancient want, that old-time anxiety.”
“Would you have me, the monster I am becoming before you.”
“I will continue to pursue her because I am weak, though now both she and I know the peak of our capacity to care for each other is behind us, and I guess we are preparing to discover the beauty in that.”
What’s more, in a paragraph that breaks up the mostly single-sentence stanzas that make up the book, the speaker examines the tone and circumstance of their first meeting while expanding to encompass a wider definition of human experience:
The musical score of our lives take precedence, in romance and in action and in dramatic courage, etcetera, and that that precedence of music-driven movement would lead her to me, her in her lip biting or her in her tongue pressing behind her top two teeth the way she does when she, say, is wearing jeans to the office on her day off, her errand day, and you don’t know her yet, you flirt with her, these of her, moments you couldn’t possibly need me to picture, now or ever, don’t you, beautiful friend, have anything to draw from, I hope so, I place hope in so, I am displaced if not so.
In trying to describe the layered textures and emotions involved in their relationship, Bartone wishes to relate on an even deeper level with the reader. He realizes the innate capacity for this type of “musical score” that we all carry with us.
Alongside reflections of the beloved are also, unavoidably, examinations of the self:
“I am able to understand my quest but unable to discover it.”
“I do not feel entitled to my emotions.”
“I am talking frivolously about love affairs, and I get worse at who I am.”
“… she is able to overcome her cravings and I am not.”
“If I truly accept the heartache I would not need to hate her.”
“What if anxiety and modesty have everything in common.”
“If I slip at least let me be indulgent. Let me look around inside.”
Although the collection deals largely with self-analysis and, as Dan Beachy-Quick describes, “the heart’s various damages,” it also contains lines about writing, literature, and teaching:
“To write a sentence that finally captures everything that was so penetrably and impenetrably teeming in the last three to five years of one’s own poetry.”
“…every word also means its opposite”
“…what happens to the little poem when I decide to indulge desperation.”
“Do you have to believe in or just be vulnerable to, to make a good poem?”
To boil it down, Practice On Mountains concerns the everyday experiences of the poet during a vacillating period in his life. It is direct while still maintaining a palpable sense of finespun lyricism. To make use again of Dan Beachy-Quick’s thoughts on the manuscript, it is “wonderfully self-searching without being narcissistic.” It is its long, discursive form that further lends to this impression of self-seeking. Ultimately, David Bartone is writing about desire, in every sense of the word, and is perhaps best described by Bartone himself: “The best thought is off somewhere, dragging on the stitch of another long skirt, this is called longing and is what the poet is most practiced at.”
