Single Poem Review: “After Scattering Ashes in August” by Emily Franklin

There are two words that make Emily Franklin’s poem “After Scattering Ashes in August” worth reading: “hope & errors.” Words brought together by an ampersand, binding them closer as if one could not exist without the other. The speaker is harvesting seeds after presumably scattering the ashes of her late grandmother, and is reflecting on the finite temporality of life, but also the unique ways in which life also regenerates life. The poet writes, “I am reminded / of my grandmother who with her knees in the dirt / told me gardening is the truest form of hope…” 

“Shed no tear—Oh shed no tear! The flower would bloom another year!” Keats would exclaim. But this poem does more than use the trope of flowers as a cipher for human mortality. The grandmother “found hope and errors everywhere / which kept her present…” The word choice “error” is fascinating, because it implies more than common human mistakes. Errors emerge out of a malfunction or misconfiguration of a method or system—in this case, the system of life. When the grandmother found that animals “took up residence / in the driver’s seat of her car where sunflower seeds / had spilled,” she let it change up her daily routine to let the creatures nest in her car and “raise their young”—walking instead of driving until the animals eventually “left without warning.” The lesson here is that we can let “errors” gently reroute us, but also that one person’s spilled seeds can generate more life, just as flowers gone to seed will find use again in the dirt.  

In a way, “After Scattering Ashes in August” reads like a small life cycle of its own—navigating the spaces of becoming and being, and making music with so many of life’s unsung gestures until the final (and single) end stop in the last line. The poem in its entirety is a run-on sentence of continuous thought. Punctuation is minimal, relying mainly on enjambment and a determined avoidance of end-stopped lines to create tension and a sense of constant movement. And just as there’s no guarantee of permanence in life, there’s no guarantee of permanence in a poem. Much like the speaker asking the dirt “to hold what I am taking and make it useful,” a poem lives as long as culture is willing to carry it. 

🍾🍾🍾🔥🔥 (3 / 5 on the Toast or Roast scale)

Postscript:

There is a typo in the fourth stanza: …”because the animals—/ chipmunks, maybe—seemed so comfortable she allowed them run of them (sic) place…” I do not believe this was intended to be the poet’s literal depiction of “hope & errors”, and I presume the line will be revised in time.   

---

Emily Franklin is the bestselling author of more than twenty novels and a poetry collection, Tell Me How You Got Here. Her award-winning work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, and numerous others as well as long-listed for the London Sunday Times Short Story Award, featured and read aloud on NPR, and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries.

“After Scatting Ashes in August” was published in Cutleaf, a project of Eastover Press.

---

History & Memory: A Look At “After Watching the Challenger Documentary on Netflix”

There are memories I recall that we collectively refer to as history: watching footage of 9/11 from my apartment in Minneapolis or seeing news of the Berlin Wall as a child. There are other memories, just as powerfully present, that shape who I am with no public discourse (comforting my daughter when her fish died, learning my son had his first kiss). These personal histories are deeply felt yet remain unknown. What Clint Margrave manages to do in his poem “After Watching the Challenger Documentary on Netflix” is brilliantly blend the space between collective and personal histories. He creates a poem that functions as history, memory, and private narrative, all at once.   

The title, simple and direct, leads us in. And it’s not just the title that is simple and direct but the poetic voice as well, which only works if the author has a certain kind of intellectual and emotional confidence in the work. To Margrave’s credit, it works extremely well here. (I sometimes find excessive, ornamental complexity and lyricism in a poem to be the equivalent of a bathroom deodorizer; you know the writer is spraying it everywhere to cover up the smell of bullshit, but I digress…) 

Margrave brings us back to “The falling debris,” The schoolteacher,” and the “sky blue walls” of his sixth-grade class. We are given a classmate who “kept launching / and exploding” a toy shuttle, playground “jokes,” and a time capsule which eventually gets thrown out. 

Retelling a collective memory is a balancing act. To capture what many experienced without cliche, without speaking over people from a soapbox, is a difficult task. I can write about Margrave’s pacing, his restraint, and even about his ability to make common adjectives (little, sky blue) seem like million dollar words by their placement, but the key aspect is the parallels, the pairings (some implied) presented throughout: the disaster and the documentary about the disaster, the toy shuttle and the Challenger, the sky blue walls and the sky itself. The school teachers. The mother and son. History, memory. Margrave takes a snapshot and transforms it into a profound poem. 

Some traumas, some memories replay over and over. Sometimes we are the boy launching and relaunching our toy shuttle to the same awful ending because we can’t fully process any other way. Witnessing changes us. “I’m a little more aware of dying now,” the note in the capsule reads (one which he “hid,” in a drawer, a telling detail). In the end, the mother throws out the capsule “not knowing / what she’d found, / or what” the speaker lost. 

I can’t exactly say with absolute certainty what was lost (innocence, a sense of immortality?) but I believe it’s something we all lose eventually. Isn’t it a comfort to know a capsule of a poem like the one Margrave wrote can give us something back?  

Welcome to Table For Deuce

Welcome to the official Table For Deuce website. We’re your hosts, Kate Hanson Foster & Michael Schmeltzer. Let me tell you a little bit about our project.

Review-centered & humor-forward, Table For Deuce (T4D) is a poetry podcast (AKA “the Table”) and publishing platform (AKA “the Seat”) whose aim is to highlight poetry and create honest, thoughtful, and dynamic engagement around art.  What started off as a simple podcast between friends is evolving to be a hub for honest discussions, thoughtful reviews, and dynamic poetry.

Our website is a centralized location where you can find all our podcasts, the wonderful work we publish via our journal The Seat: Poetry & Reviews, as well as our blog which will feature various updates and reviews (including single poem reviews) written by us.

Although we have a steady post, publication, and podcast cycle, you may notice we don't do standard journal issues. We want to create a more meditative, focused publication style to combat the hectic nature of social media. Every poem and review we publish deserves space to breathe. They deserve the undivided attention of our audience, and at the very least, our extended attention as editors. We do our best to provide that by publishing one piece at a time and sharing it numerous ways.

We hope you say, explore, and enjoy what you find here. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even discover some Easter Eggs from time to time hidden in an author bio or in a blog post…

Welcome everyone to Table For Deuce.