Gospels of Snow: A Look at Bill Neumire’s “When I was alone,”
If you grew up around the same time I did, there’s a good chance Val Kilmer features prominently in your memories. From iconic roles in “Top Gun” and “Tombstone” to being “the greatest swordsman who ever lived,” Kilmer’s career spanned decades, over numerous genres, from stage to screen. He also wrote, painted, took photographs, sang, and filmed thousands of hours of footage of himself over a lifetime. In every sense of the word, Kilmer was a creator.
But this review isn’t about him per se; it’s about Bill Neumire’s poem “When I was alone,” a meditative piece on art, witness, and existential isolation.
The longer I sit with Neumire’s compact poem, the more melancholy I feel. Yet, there is satisfaction in that sadness, an acceptance that allows for what I can only describe as peace.
The poem is slender, short (~40 words), with a title that flows directly into the body. There is a gentle elegance of enjambment reminiscent of W.S. Merwin or Franz Wright, a soft turning of thought as you read along. Each line feels so complete unto itself, and paradoxically, when you pull back and look at the whole, the lines are dependent on each other. The effect is that of a literary photomosaic.
There is an elegiac interiority to this piece emphasized by each pairing presented: the lone speaker and Kilmer, Kilmer and his film, the throat and its cancer, the voice and the machine. Everything feels separated, isolated by an insurmountable divide. There is an entire conversation to be had in these thirteen lines about the distance between artists and art, actors and audience (or perhaps witness would be a good word here), and even about the artistic voice and AI. How lonely this world of dew can be. And yet. (My apologies to Issa.)
Or perhaps we should call this a world of snow. The poem ends with the mysterious, tranquil lines “like reading / a gospel of snow / I found in the hills / & told no one of.” While the Gospels may be “good news” the disciples wanted to spread, Neumire’s gospel remains a revelation without the reveal, an epiphany solely understood by the speaker.
We all carry temporary gospels of our temporary lives, a collection of experiences exclusively and intimately known mostly to ourselves. Whether we write poetry or film ourselves for thousands of hours, who else better to attend that “sudden funeral,” who else better to read that gospel and mourn our own loss than ourselves? Maybe that’s why Neumire’s speaker “told no one.” Who else would get it?
I didn’t know Val Kilmer beyond his work, and I don’t know Bill Neumire beyond his poetry. All I can say is how comforting it is to get a glimpse into their esoteric gospels, how peaceful it is to write my own. When I think of it that way, all of us with our sacred work, the gap between art and artist, actor and audience, poet and reviewer, doesn’t feel insurmountable at all.
