January 23, 2023
In this vivid 11th collection (after Spell), Lauterbach’s careful diction ranges from plain speech to densely packed sound collages. “I wish to be clear,” she writes, but “I object/ to the literal.” Elsewhere, she claims “words are like small magnets,/ pulling other words toward them.” The eponymous door recurs throughout: “Tenuous, the wire or thread, or single line/ drawn across, edge to edge,// or down to the wedge between/ frame and floor, like a slip of moonlight.” Lauterbach brilliantly demonstrates how words have mutable meanings, as when a “slip” (a garment to be worn) is reframed as an exit: “The southern sky has turned peachy./ I would like to wear it out tomorrow/ as a slip. And so slip/ through a hole in the sky.” As well, the poet portrays consciousness as “filmic,” full of appearances and disappearances, and tinged by an underlying sadness: “I/ went through hoping to greet you/ on the dark side.” These perceptive entries offer a captivating reflection on the range of inner landscapes and the powers of language.
