you can’t get there from here by Margaret J. Vann

 

In Margaret Vann’s second poetry collection, You Can’t Get There from Here, the writer takes the reader on a journey, both literal and metaphorical.

 

Vann’s road trips take place in the 39 Ford sedan named “Betsy” that took her from her childhood home in rural Georgia all the way to relatives’ homes in Ohio and Colorado.

 

The poet remembers carsickness, the magic of a moon “slipping through the slash pines,” and once, picking up “a hitchhiking priest” who rode the tailgate to Amarillo, Texas.

 

There are bathroom breaks—too few, and falling rocks—too many.

 

There were rules of the road (“Don’t sit on the edge of the seat, you may fly off and be killed”), and rules of the heart (Savor the chocolate Daddy sent home from the war, one square at a time).

 

Vann’s interior journey explores passionate love relationships, strong family connections, and that which sustains this poet’s soul: the natural world of native hydrangea, nodding trillium, and fluttering butterflies which instruct the reader to “Go out! Hit the road again, Enjoy the show!”

 

Readers will do just that, savoring the poems like chocolate melting on the tongue.

–Beth Thames, Free-lance writer and columnist for al.com.

 

Are we there yet? Thus begins a kinesthetic journey through childhood road trips, matriarchal advice that can’t be ignored, aging, loss, both natural and cultural landscapes, passion, love grown cold – the pleasures and perils of being human. Witty, wise, fond of wordplay, Margaret J. Vann’s immediately recognizable voice is sure and formally astute. Tones shift from humorous to deeply ironic; from conversational storytelling toward ritual and incantation: these poems invite reflection and remembrance, repetition and savoring. To read this collection straight through is like embarking on a long, cross-country trip with a trusted fellow traveler, reminiscing and sharing histories, philosophies, considerations small and large along the way.  It is also to participate in the author’s travels through her memory and life to arrive where she belongs. You can’t get there from here, these poems suggest, in the sense that “there” is elusive, always changing (as “here” changes), somewhere on the horizon; and a goal reached may or may not resemble what it looked like from a distance. At the same time, reading, writing, and exploring are exemplary forms of “getting there.” This engaging and thoughtful gathering stands as proof.

–Susan Luther, Breathing in the Dark: Poems

 

The well crafted poems of Margaret Vann’s You Can’t Get There from Here richly demonstrate that life is a journey to a place we can never reach. Moving freely between the literal and metaphoric, we pleasure-ride in Valdosta, take road trips to Ohio and Colorado, globe-hop from Cuba to China. A recurring theme is love, both physical—“a rising heat within”—and something more expansive, including family, friends, “woods set afire with . . . blooming forsythia.” The obstacles are many—cliffs, car wrecks, sexism, racism at a Southern swimming pool, war, a train carrying soldiers to their death. The journey—joyful if challenging—moves with grace and confidence through memory, myth, art, music, all the seasons of nature. The greatest challenge is absence, emptiness after loss—family members disappearing from old photos; more specifically, “my presence without you”—the haunting possibility that there is “nothing to discern.” In the end, getting “there” is not the point. “Here”—in the heart, where all roads begin, where we live and love and grieve and hope and relish every mile—is finally enough. “It is here,” the poet concludes, “I belong.”

–Harry Moore, author of Bearing the Farm Away and Beyond Paradise: The Unweeded Garden.