Single Poem Review: “Desert Eclipse” By Claudia Putnam
When I think of an “occasional poem,” more often than not my mind wanders to Hallmark, those rows of cards celebrating, mourning, or congratulating some particular moment or another, forgettable lines for unforgettable events.
“Desert Eclipse” by Claudia Putnam is technically an occasional poem but the writer’s lyric sensibilities combined with a story-teller’s charisma make this a much more memorable (and enjoyable) read. The lines flow smoothly, barely a bump to interrupt the pace. The meter and internal rhymes offer connective tissue and musicality in places that teeter too closely to prose for my taste but the smoothness of the writing is undeniable.
Putnam can put together some enviably clean lines.
As for the content itself, “Desert Eclipse” is a deceptively simple narrative. Underneath, however, is something more fascinating and more tragic about human nature, fear, and gender.
The moon, “inside out and angry,” becomes something sinister, wants to talk but “Not like a woman” might. It inspires awe, enough to make the speaker feel as if she’d have “fed it anything it asked for.” She doesn’t, however. She falls asleep instead. When she wakes the moon has transformed to “a she again, full-faced and radiant, seated on a stone throne and draped / in a robe of white feathers,” a lovely image in contrast to the “razored bright” light from its earlier incarnation.
“Somewhere, I know, virgins died for that,” reads the final (and my favorite) line. I think many times in history and in the present we’ve convinced ourselves that that’s what it takes to create a radiant moon again, to create security again. Virgins, children, the most vulnerable among us, killed in the name of survival. But if the poem argues that a certain masculinity of being (or “masculine energy” as Zuckerberg might say) caused such sacrifice, it offers an alternative as well. Maybe we need to witness first what frightens us, then sleep against it like “an old lady.” Maybe that’s how the world transforms, if only we could resist the fear that consumes, that asks of us everything.
🍾🍾🍾🔥🔥
Claudia Putnam lives in the Pacific Northwest. Her debut collection, The Land of Stone and River, won the Moon City Press poetry prize. Recent poems can be found in Iron Horse, The Fourth River, Slippery Elm, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. She also has two short prose books out—a memoir from Split/Lip Press, and a novella from Neutral Zones Press.
Currently Reading:
“Cloud Missives” by Kenzie Allen and the (relatively) recent translation of “Kristin Lavransdattir” by Sigrid Unset. Listening to “The Bird Way” by Jennifer Ackerman (which is fantastic, incredible, wonderful, terrific - Claudia Putnam).
For More About the Author:
Bluesky: @ClaudiaPutnam.bsky.social
