Poet Mary Buchinger reminded me recently that the first poem she published was in Somerville’s literary magazine Ibbetson Street that I founded with Dianne Robitaille, and Richard Wilhelm in 1998. So it is a pleasure to have her here in the LYRICAL, in celebration of a new collection of poetry she released: Aerialist.

Mary Buchinger of Cambridge celebrated a book launch at the Grolier this month for her new book of poems entitled Aerialist (Gold Wake Press, 2015; shortlisted for the May Swenson Poetry Award/Utah State University Press, the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Prize, and the Perugia Press Prize). Writing about Aerialist, Bob Brooks, poet and author of Unguarded Crossing and Subverse, notes:

Poet Mary Buchinger

A typical poem in Mary Buchinger’s wonderfully titled collection displays, like the Aerialist herself, the strength to maintain both motion and pinpoint grace and look good doing it. But the collection’s scope extends far beyond this, ranging from sturdy memory-intensive stories of farm life in the thumb of Michigan to impressions painted as with a single hair (the Proust poems) and from metaphysical speculations (“Redeem/the unread vision”) and queries (“The Latest Rapture”) to linguistic hijinks (“Call, Me, Ishmael”).  Among many outstanding  pieces are one entitled “We wander through the cemetery,” which reproduces an ambulatory recollection of a companion’s great-aunt, studded with small surprises set forth among the quiet features of the cemetery and ending on a note that lingers deliciously. Meanwhile the Aerialist rises from her seat on the subway and performs hanging from the hand-straps. In the concluding poem, a final delight (“On the River ’s Edge”), geese in the river float on the water, feel the winter ’s ice in the sky, and say, “We live in two places at once, / Hwaann! Hwaann! You too. You too.” This is an exciting and satisfying collection.

Poem from Aerialist, by Mary Buchinger:

On the river’s edge
geese float like speckled seeds.
Later, they will sprout wings, leave
the naked frogs tumbling in the current.

The geese sip air and water alike, press against
the liquids, they too feel the ice
in the upper sky, suspended, crystallized.

They say, We live in two places at once,
Hwaann! Hwaann! You too. You too.

 — Mary Buchinger

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