The Blue Field

Kim Fahner is a poet and the author of You Must Imagine the Cold Here.

In the piece titled “Two Ways,” Barbara Klar sets out the idea that
there are “Two ways of seeing everything.” The line that begins the
piece is startlingly beautiful: “We have fallen through the year / to
where sky scatters / flowers and a rope of suns / burns on the tree west
of us.” The idea that there is more than one way of perceiving
something is reflected throughout this collection of poetry. The things
that one might sometimes take for granted—everyday chores, objects, or
happenings—are transformed into the poetic.

In “Two Ways,” Klar questions the idea of “Darkness / as darkness
or darkness as light.” An interesting echo of the work of Gwendolyn
MacEwen appears in Klar’s poetry, with the shadow of MacEwen making an
appearance in an earlier poem, “Body of Many Blue Wings,” which
finds it origin in a line written by MacEwen. The idea of finding light
in shadows is one that MacEwen often tapped into in her wonderful
poetry, and so too does Klar find this light in The Blue Field.

Klar’s poetry is replete with lovely images. In “Nine Reasons,”
for instance, the poet compares the sun rising to temples being built,
rising “for centuries. They sound like architects thinking.” In
“The Blue Field,” she writes: “The sun falls no lower / than
unashamed sadness, / shadow on blue snow.” Within the same poem, Klar
writes of “A trillion six-sided stars” that “fall and give off
dusk.”

Klar’s poetry is rooted firmly in the earth, but filled with light
and beauty. The Blue Field is a wonderful collection for anyone who can
find and see light in shadowed places when words, images, and pure
poetry so deftly show the way.