Fields and Bridges

Abstract

The poems of Fields and Bridges focus on how one person's emotional landscape and those who are part of it can connect memory, loss, and a sense of identity. The main subjects--the speaker's dead friend and her twin brother-- are ones which the speaker both distances from and acknowledges exist in herself. The meter varies from mechanical and quick to mostly blank verse, allowing the speaker's meditative tone to speak through the poems to the subjects she addresses. Both the speaker's fear of disappearance and sense of isolation are interrogated through the range of her subject matter, from her childhood experiences to city homelessness, from her twin's struggles to a factory to a common office work environment.