I’ll be immediately honest. I didn’t want to read this book. For the better part of two weeks it laid unopened around my living room until, when faced with the decision to renew or simply return it to the library, I finally peeked inside. 

Standing there at the kitchen counter sipping late morning cold coffee, I warmed right up to the first page. I was several pages in before daily tasks forced me to lay it aside, but I was no longer afraid and came back for more here and there during the next several days until I finished it. An entire book of contemporary poetry.

As a reasonably well rounded reader I will mix it up with poetry. On occasion I relax with my favorites by Robert Service, preen my way through a few of Shakespeare’s sonnets (wouldn’t my English teachers be proud), blush at Goethe, hang with the Bronte sisters and despond at the altar of Dickenson. There are others I also enjoy, but none are contemporary poets. For some reason, probably the unfiltered deluge of self-published works made possible these days by the Internet and e-publishing, I do not read recently published poetry. By recent, I mean within the past couple decades.  I guess I just allow time to filter my reading list. If it survives a century or two it’s probably worth trying. I’m not saying this is a great approach to literacy, just one I’ve taken out of frustration. Finding good poetry these days is like trying to take a sip of nectar from a firehose of … well, you get the picture.

So when I say that I didn’t want to read this book, it’s because the thought of an entire book of contemporary poetry made me whimper. I’m happy to be wrong in my assumptions. 

Upriver by Carolyn Kremers is a woman’s experience of Alaska distilled into a slender book of poems blended with Yup’ik language and dance. The Yup’ik had me worried since I’m no Alaska Native language scholar, but I was relieved that Kremers seemed to understand that very angst and expressed it with irony as one line in a poem called “The Language Keepers” shows, “Angyarpaliyugngayugnarquq.  He can probably make a large boat.” Try saying that just one time fast. Or “January. Iralull’er. The bad month,” a perfect description of the coldest month in the Alaskan winter. My anxiety was transformed into fascination with these glimpses into the Yup’ik language. Kremers includes translations of Yup’ik words and explanations of cultural references in the back of her book for pursuing deeper insights.

It was somewhere “under loping chartreuse light” gazing at “a necklace of snow gracing green jagged mountains” that I developed an affection for these verses about life in my home state. Rather than just rambling on about Alaska’s scenic beauty, or the various themes of the human heart, Kremers effectively melds vivid emotional content with authentic visions and colors of Alaska, such as this picture of longing and an Interior Alaskan summer from Kremers’ poem, “What I Did Not Imagine…”

“To desire you was to wish

for rich white clouds, green

ground, thunder

and the slash of lightning

close; how a robin sings

when the storm stops

and the air is new

like promises.” 

Upriver is as much about people as it is about place and I enjoyed the unexpected ties linking the two. The unexpected thoughts such as…

“How an ivory watchband comes to the wrist

of the wearer, out of a black

cold ocean alive with food;

plankton, baleen,

beluga whale”

Kremers captures the multi-faceted, conflicted nature of popular perceptions of Alaska with brilliant wit, but without holding back the punchline to the gut. We see this in the poem, “Dr. Seuss & the Department of Fish & Game,” which seems like a cute children’s verse, “It could be a musk ox, perhaps it’s a moose, or a migrating white-throated emperor goose,” but continues... 

“It could be a walrus without any head,

raped for its ivory and then dumped with the dead

like a sack.”

The reader is not allowed to coast through typical Alaskan themes with any degree of pleasurable complacency. Which is fitting for those who understand how it is to make our way in this wild state. Complacency can lead to physical death in a moment, or the death of spirit when over the course of years our eyes glaze over to the wonder of mountains, sunsets, and vistas that are prized by fresh-eyed visitors.

Kremers’ poems share glimpses of the struggle to make a home in remote Alaskan villages and the conflicting pull towards the more populated Alaskan Interior, particularly Fairbanks. Upriver is actually a sequel to her earlier book of poems Place of the Pretend People published in 1996, which I have not read yet. However, that didn’t hinder me from enjoying Upriver on its own. Carolyn Kremers was a U.S. Fulbright scholar to Russia (2008-2009) and has been an artist-in-residence at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Denali National Park. Cataloging systems aside, it is more than fitting for her poems to sit on the library shelf next to the works of John Haines and Robert Service. 

Even if reading a book of poetry is not your thing – maybe on the same list as weeding dandelions from a lawn by hand, hiking through devil’s club, or feeding local mosquito populations (depending on how much you enjoyed/hated English class in school) – I strongly recommend giving Upriver a try. Who knows, maybe you’ll find the perfect quote for a Facebook post, tweet, or a Pinterest wall art project. These days, unless you happen to be handing out Pulitzers, there are few higher acclaims to be offered by average readers like me for a sublimely worded verse. Of course, there is always the age old option of voting with your wallet at a local book retailer. 

All quotes and excerpts are taken from Upriver by Carolyn Kremers © 2013 University of Alaska Press