As Mothers' day approaches, its ironic and compelling that Heather Bartlett's chapbook, Bleeding Yellow Light, was recently published because in the book, the poet delivers a complex discussion of gender and motherhood. This is not to say that Bartlett's book revels in sentimentality. Instead, her work reveals the hardships of post-contemporary femininity with grit and energy.
Bartlett's collection begins by giving voice to Andrea Yates, the woman infamous for drowning her five children in 2001. Though such a poem could easily divulge into hysterics, Bartlett carefully reigns her speaker in "Andrea Yates Responds," in which Yates presents her deceased children to the reader ("I can see them / standing in a row--") (1). What is most interesting about this poem is the the speaker's chilly and distant tone--a tone that at once feels sublime and unhinged.
Juxtaposed with Yates, another speaker also occupies the poems--a speaker that is self-consciously a poet and visionary. This speaker constantly feels at odds with how she wants to express her experience. In "Dear Reader," this speaker tells her audience "Let me be the one who tell you first--/ You will not be saved" (3), and in "Grand Central Station" she tells us:
My Mother
doesn't like me to walk at night
alone. Is this restricted
to streets and sidewalks?
If I am alone, on grass,
in the dark--is this
disrespecting my mother? (11)
The speaker remains in conflict with interpretation, questioning how she and the reader should assess their experience. It is such conflict that allows her to empathize with Yates. We see this best in "Motherhood," in which the speaker proclaims, "I give birth everyday at least once--late afternoons, usually later, in summer...I haven't wanted a child, not the way the television actress loves her new baby" (17). In such a poem, Yates and the poet-speaker converge, both voicing their skepticism of the cultural expectations for their sex.
Bartlett's book also remains preoccupied with sexual abuse and suicide. We see this poignantly in two pieces titled "Suicide Poem" and in a narrative poem about rape, "Scroon Lake: June 8 2000." However the most interesting poem in this vein is Bartlett's "Obituary," a wonderful re-imagining of Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus." Describing death, Bartlett writes
I touched it, rubbed it
between my fingers, smelled it
to take in a piece
of the moment
or waiting
for it to come again. (30)
This is the poet at her best: writing about despair with a bold physicality. In fact, that is the greatest asset of these poems--their lack of fear. Bartlett is unafraid to write about the uncertainty of language, of being a women, of the institution of motherhood, of sex, and of death. She is not afraid to give us poems of skepticism and the body. She is not afraid to say, "I am still / here, waiting for you" (31) and because of her courage, the reader wants to meet her over and over.
You can read Heather Bartlett's Bleeding Yellow Light for free or purchase a paper copy here.
