Medium

In the preface to her fourth poetry collection, Medium, Johanna Skibsrud states the book was inspired by “the powerful women whose bodies, minds, and spirits have acted as conduits of knowledge and intuition; as points of convergence for the past, present, and the future.” She hopes the poems

might lend shape to those aspects of experience we presume to be “unknowable,” “unspeakable,” or prohibitively “other,” so that even distance and difference might be encountered not as a breach but as a connective element: one that joins us to one another, as well as to what we don’t, and perhaps can never, understand.

The structure of Medium is fascinating, as each poem is preceded by a short biographical note after the medieval Vidas (short prose texts about the lives of troubadours that comment on their work). Skibsrud skillfully weaves these narrative notes with lyrical persona poems that act as mediums themselves, giving voice to women like Marie Curie, Clytemnestra, Sojourner Truth, Rachel Carson, and others.

One remarkable example is the Vida for Elizabeth Shaw Melville (Herman Melville’s wife), which calls attention to “the physical and emotional abuse she and her children suffered as a result of what Melville once called ‘the great art of telling the truth,’” while “her pleas for help were either silenced or ignored.” Elizabeth and her children were Melville’s copyists, and Elizabeth “completed and edited the manuscript of Billy Bud” after her husband’s death, yet she was blamed for “unrest in the Melville household,” which was attributed to her “poor housekeeping skills.” The poem that follows, titled “I Have Been Busy,” uses repetition to bring attention to Elizabeth’s version of the “great art of telling the truth.” Skibsrud masterfully plays with language, repurposing Melville’s words to reveal the poetry in tearing down barriers that have held one back:

It is a
great art and
by my faith — 
the only thing I can
keep — 

a secret I’ve

torn in two. A

white page.