By Greg Bem
My attitude should become more like my way of describing great observations. I need to know, from all the whatnot that gets in my way of thinking, about what is going on.
(from “Former Present Times,” page 17)
The metaphorically oceanic foraying presented in Phantom Captain bridges humor and disdain, hope and fear, want and rejection. Kim Rosenfield’s collection is an offering of feminist philosophy intertwined with collages of poetry, and prolonged via spritzes of inquisition and reflection. It is a jumbled, though poignant, bulk that connects psychology to the void by way of rickety boardwalks of theory and the ironic intellect.
I’m so glad you’re here with me
so I can softly whisper these words to you:
I like having you close.
(from “It’s Been an Almost Hysterical Test of My Mettle,” page 67)
This is a fantastically approachable collection, one that is balanced by brief moments of experience. And experience falls upon large spectrums, from the banal to the ecstatic. In one moment, the reader is tumbled through images, abstractions, and miscellany, only to confront the speaker straight-on in the next moment, through field and structure that share and reinforce moments of emotional vulnerability.
Thunder strikes cascading shrapnel-blasted stems, shredding moldering roots into lactonic earth chum. Phenolic clouds convene like harpies overhead as spring breezes turn chill.
(from “Nature’s Afterworld Hours,” page 46)
Rosenfield’s work is approachable and yet strange, which makes it more spiraled and compelling. There are undercurrents of scathing towards history, capitalism, and the dystopia of the United States. Comments on war and male domination, and the tragedy of individuality, where it breaks down, where the commons are utterly vacuous and ghostly.
The book’s form, a neatly organized six sections that are otherwise spirited and mildly chaotic page-to-page, connects the reader through a series of blueprints, ruminations, and seemingly scattered thoughts, though a first read may lead to more modular connections backward and forward throughout the text.
Rosenfield offers curious breaks and patches in form and the visual page is connected through a curious though comfortable blend of prose and verse. Despite the allusions to radical change and disintegration, the text never fully succumbs to chaos and breakdown, instead alluding to what’s possible through the shadowy underpinnings of form and language.
I am as American as suffering. Born from an epidemic of people who like to eat sugar for a high and make ineptitude fun, who are not yet social enough to understand pathological hatred is making history the wrong approach.
(from “Former Present Times,” page 23)
What struck me most in reading the poet’s explorations and critical examinations of philosophy and psychoanalysis was the direct and cunning humor, a humor that lines the pages, inserting sarcasm on one page and orgasm on the next. The lightening of the work through humor does not demean or entangle Rosenfield’s commentary but offers the reader a chance to see how encompassing our world must be to see truth. A balance of foils, verisimilitude, a brightening through subtext and liveliness.
I must try to release the water of the past
From “Longing Crosses the Sea,” page 1
Thoroughly from cover to cover, Phantom Captain alludes to the fluidity of the depths of our collective being. Rosenfield asks us what position, if any, must we serve as we navigate the everyday torpor and everyday storm of our own spot in the sea?
You can find the book here: https://fenceportal.org/book/phantom-captain/
Greg Bem is a poet and librarian living on the sacred and unceded land of the Spokane Tribe: South Hill, Spokane, Washington. He writes book reviews for Rain Taxi, Exacting Clam, The International Examiner, and more. He is a proud union supporter and finds many of his hours stretched across mountains and water bodies. Learn more at gregbem.com.
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North of Oxford 
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