Sidestep Catapult drives me crazy

I woke up this morning from a dream of wild animals carousing in the backyard, so I picked up the book next to my bed: Sidestep Catapult by Anne-Adele Wight. I found those same creatures described by my own unconscious lurking in his poems. Some animals are hungry; some just curious; others are downright vicious. Wight embraces the moods of these animals in all their complexity.

Wight’s poetry brings our primitive nature to consciousness. As I read, a nagging memory of my primal side breaks to the surface, illuminating everything. Neuropsychology has mapped this part of our brain. It is sometimes known as the reptilian brain and part of it is located at the base of the skull. It lives within us and informs our behaviors, though many are eager to deny it.

A master mystic, DC Vision, once told me, “People think the natural world is beautiful. It’s not always so glorious. When you look closer, you see that nature is wild. It devours itself.” He spent several years traveling the United States on horseback, so he should know.

I have my own hunches about the reptilian brain. Avoiding interactions with the natural world and denying that we are part animal pushes our primal instincts deeper into the unconscious. Repression makes this part of human nature, which is linked to survival, more dangerous, or something to fear. Wight chooses to confront our inherent animal instincts instead. In What Led to the Hawk’s Nest, his wild creatures appear spontaneously in the civilized landscape. “The Florida panther walks towards you from the garage.” Later, “the teeth close on your wrist.” This theme is reiterated in Leopard Flower, “did you order animals for the tool shed? / They’ll open it up.”

To our civilized minds, wild animals are unpredictable and cruel. However, there is a clear memory of the human world as part of this:

It’s been eons since we lived in the sea
still speechless
in heavy forest language
our throats lack bone and string.

Wight points to the separation between humans and animals: communication through language is what generates a rupture between species. However, even with all their skill, humans lack the apparatus to speak to animals.

Wight’s subjects are imbued with light and ignited by crystalline energies. Her book houses the irrepressible: the elemental forces of nature and the mysteries that surround them. Earth, air, water, fire and spirit merge in many of her pieces. Crystalline communication, plant energies, water expressions and air gusts emanate energy and light through movement or even stillness. Although these elementals travel on a slightly different frequency than humans and animals, they are no less powerful. When activated, elementals give signals of supernatural importance. Transatlantic night flight is a good example of this:

From inside the Ptolemy crystal
grid lines divide the Atlantic
traffic control drone.
Emeralds fall around me
calliope ringing
brings them down on a windfall
ululating carousel melodies.

Is this the music of the spheres?

I love the way Wight poses the final question, out of the way of this stanza. She is an expert in perceiving through multiple senses. Wight is also attuned to the experiences of the astral body.

Christmas Shopping takes this holistic and sensual awareness even further:

each letter an element
each element its opposite
each in front of a color
every color on fire

Solstice Eve recounts a magical ritual where those gathered merge with the natural world and initiate a current of energy that is quickly set in motion.

four people five trees
how loud is the number
working here and now.

Something pulls towards the skin of the tree
from the center of a ring of five
musical fights in high branches

In magical rituals, the intention guides the results. The act of gathering creates a centrifugal force sustained by those in a circle and perceived and expressed through feelings, images and sounds in nature.

Wight’s work is the product of a mind with keen sensibilities. For those who see themselves as part of the natural world, not just a banal observer, Sidestep Catapult will provide a jolt of recognition and a renewed sense of unity with our wild animal core.