Dear Michael Kleber-Diggs,
I’m not good at growing things. My Venus flytrap died in less than a month. I set down my potted Spider Plant somewhere along Kenyon College’s Middle Path, forgot to pick it up, and couldn’t find it later. Nowadays, my only relationship with flora involves dropping a spoonful of water into a terrarium twice a year.
I imagine that writing poetry is like nurturing a fragile herb. You plant your idea as best you can. You try to care for it. You can build a trellis, give it structure, or you can let it take its own shape. How you have cultivated such a vast forest is far beyond my understanding.
Your collection is stunning, ripe with unexpected fruit, richer upon each read. Your surprising word choice, poignant line breaks, and gut-wrenching accounts of the commonplace and the tragic give your book depth and beauty.
Your poems stand tall on their own, but have striking conversations with each other; echoing words, giving them new meanings. The embodied loss of your father, “a planet,” is reflected in the “massive planets” of your mother’s eyes. The “river” of life, the genetic material shared between mother and child transforms into the “joy” and “pain” doubled through marriage.
From your very first sentence, the threat and devastating consequences of racist police violence looms large; on the news, in your everyday life, even haunting your dreams. From an annotated report of Freddie Gray being beaten to death to a mourning for George Floyd, you illuminate what it means to live in sadness and fear of an institution destroying the citizens it claims to protect. You reveal the harsh demands of living in America; to stay silent under the shadow of American Exceptionalism.
Your collection also grapples with the murder of your father and the gravity his absence creates, contrasting his death with the birth of your daughter, painting an evocative yet elusive depiction of his “shadow” forty years later. In “Coniferous Fathers” you strive to imagine a more hopeful future, one in which fathers play a more active role in the lives of their children:
“Let’s kill off sternness and play down wisdom
give us fathers of laughter and fathers who cry,
fathers who say Check This out, I’m scared
I’m sorry, or I don’t know. Give us fathers strong enough
to admit they want to be near us; they’ve always
wanted to be near us. Give us fathers desperate
for something different, not Johnny Appleseed
not even Atticus Finch. No more rolling stones.”
With such vivid descriptions, you create a dazzling host of fathers who are present in all seasons, vulnerable enough to admit that they are human. Your desire for “something different” serves as an inspiration for the reader to picture a completely new kind of parent while implicitly compelling themselves to reflect upon their own. Through the fashioning of gentler, kinder men, you silently acknowledge the shortcomings of past ones.
Most impressive of all, you find beauty in everyday things and relationships. Subtle kindness, or in your words, “the smallest violence,” takes the form of watering your neighbor’s flowers at night. Grief manifests as a missing store clerk. In “the Grove,” you see people as trees, united by desire,
“If only we could know how twisted up our roots
are, we might make vast shelter together—
Cooler places, verdant spaces, more sustaining
air. But we are strange trees, reluctant
in this forest—we oak and ash, we pine—
the same the same, not different. All of us
reach toward star and cloud, all of us want
our share of light, just enough rainfall.”
Your rich imagery creates a simple yet powerful message of oneness; we reach for the same light, thirst for the same water. Your words hold multiple meanings—pine (verb); to suffer a mental and physical decline, especially because of a broken heart. Your repetition flows so well it can be easily overlooked, “the same the same, not different.” Amongst the dissonance of cruelty and horror, you sing a melody of hope and understanding.
Maybe one day I’ll learn how to plant healthy greens. Maybe I’ll volunteer at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens or buy a starter kit online. But for now, it’s enough to read your words and take in the greenery. Or no, it’s more than enough; it’s a gift.
Best,
Elijah Manning
