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leighlucas's review against another edition
5.0
Gorgeous book. Understated or plainly stated images are a beauty I will keep. This account of working on a trash crew takes you squelching through a dystopian future where carcasses and pepsi cans and human bodies lay waste. Absolutely would tell you to read it.
lavagurl's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Taneum Bambrick debuts Vantage, a collection where one can not escape the landscape. Vantage is a place or position affording a good view but our view is of contemporary rural America, a space wrought with contradictions. Scenes are rooted in raw reality, not loose metaphors. A portrait of the working class is portrayed by a privileged poet who participates in the ecosystem of the reservoirs of dams on the Columbia River. Being the only woman on a garbage crew, the self is scarred much like the geography, yet exists as a site of reclamation and repair. A dam-drowned town tells of a love poem to the Earth, urging action and attention in Bambrick’s exploration of place, occupying no place, and places us as occupiers of the land.
The collection opens up with Litter, language that evokes a visceral reaction with no room for romanticization. The first line “I become part of this garbage crew” (5) invites us to do the work of witnessing. This poem prepared us with the symbolism—the condoms an object of sexuality, the dead goat a series of animal imagery to come and a stand-in for sacrifice, and “the sound of a spine snapped” (5) as a signifier of violence. Despite the descriptions, the speaker does not convey the scene from a distance. In “litter grabbers outstretched, I’m combing for the bottom half,” (5) Bambrick makes an effort to uncover the buried bodies left behind that no one cares to look after.
Elk Splat imagines “whoever’d spooked the elk was the kind of person we liked to imagine as one rich kid. What we were better than” (14), Bambrick touches on the role of class and holds this sentiment of separation also expressed in Ownership as “I played a passive part in exploiting. Even now. I make it hard for myself to blame me” (27). It is easy to entertain binaries of right and wrong but Bambrick rejects these easy assumptions. “There was little we could do to move them” (14) expresses the helplessness of the individual but reinstates that everyone is complicit. For Bambrick, this is a summer job, one gotten through their father’s connections which offers the comfort of leaving after looking. The locals look too, making a spectacle out of the mess. Yet “Some parts preserved under water” (14) is a refusal in remains.
Road Salvage encourages us to examine our selfishness, to see how we can exist outside of the self. Rapid industrialization and colonization are contrasted by the resistance of systems, “called that impulse bodily” (19). Jim covers for the speaker when he could easily choose profit over people. He demonstrates the significance of consideration, using the wood to make a fort for his grandkid and the antlers for his wife’s paperweight. His humanity rests in his refusal to be cast as a caricature made to be pitied, “some dust bowl feeding his family from the trash.” (20) These people are not victims. They assert agency in resisting rigidity.
Biological Control Task takes violence and mistakes it for the mundane, the seagulls as “dirty laundry” and “wet book covers” (21). Its slant rhymes create patterns of reliable violence. “Show them our girl” (22) is cognizant of the category of woman and their worth. The heron is beheld as a beautiful bounty. “When I cried it made them comfortable like I could be a daughter, wife or something they knew how to see” (22) reaffirms the men’s perception of femininity. Her hesitation to take up space on her own page is evident in her characterization through the eyes of the crew in moments of misogyny or overt expressions of masculinity. The final line is echoed in Sturgeon, a series of prose stanzas that confront the ugly.
The speaker in Biological Control Task crying for the heron but not the seagulls brings up the question of what deserves sympathy. The language of the perpetrators matters, as “our fossil fish” enacts possession. Do we only protect what provides for us? Bambrick argues that no place is of more value than another, and no life is not worth saving. When asked “Why would you stay?” (53), Bambrick responds with pride in her work and an omission of guilt. Through anecdotes about her father, we are not to find who is at fault but “decide what I could live with” and acknowledge that “Even in our best attempts at reparation we excavate.” (54)
Bambrick stands at the intersection of ecology and identity, reminding us to realize the relationship between the land, ourselves, and other people. In witnessing this common violence, our power resides in “our memory of what the river means.” (54)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Body horror, Animal death, Misogyny, and Sexual violence
torit's review against another edition
4.0
Bambrick doesn’t shy away from the ugly, and that’s what makes this collection so unique. I also really enjoyed the progression of the collection as I read it.
freechasetoday's review against another edition
5.0
“We can only save the river with our memory of what the river means.” - the final line of “Sturgeon,” a gorgeous and expansive lyric essay near the end of this book. Taneum Bambrick has written a gut punch of a book, one that manages narrative, ellipsis, environmentalism, safety, empathy, violence, and much else with “impeccable off-grammar,” to use Sharon Olds’s phrase from the introduction. This book must be read as a whole; every moment building on what came before.
sunpeachedtea's review against another edition
5.0
This collection completely blew me away. I've never read a book of poetry that changed me as much as Vantage has.
Vantage is a collection of poems about the summer(s) Bambrick worked on a garbage/maintenance crew for the dams in Vantage, Washington. The poems are accessible with little figurative language which I appreciated immensely. Vantage is gritty, gross, harsh, and vulnerable. Bambrick's poems explore being on the receiving end of sexism from her older male coworkers, her struggles as a young queer woman in a small town, and the upsetting things she witnessed/experienced while working for the dams. (Warning: lots of dead animals and implied sexual assault.)
Vantage is the most cohesive poetry collection I have read. The poems seem to occur somewhat chronologically, and it is intriguing to see her relationship with her coworkers change over the course of the book. One of the things I appreciate the most about Vantage is that while it deals with harsh things, the poems are not written for the sake of shock value; Bambrick is careful when dealing with violence and violent imagery.
I cannot recommend Vantage enough. Read this book!
Vantage is a collection of poems about the summer(s) Bambrick worked on a garbage/maintenance crew for the dams in Vantage, Washington. The poems are accessible with little figurative language which I appreciated immensely. Vantage is gritty, gross, harsh, and vulnerable. Bambrick's poems explore being on the receiving end of sexism from her older male coworkers, her struggles as a young queer woman in a small town, and the upsetting things she witnessed/experienced while working for the dams. (Warning: lots of dead animals and implied sexual assault.)
Vantage is the most cohesive poetry collection I have read. The poems seem to occur somewhat chronologically, and it is intriguing to see her relationship with her coworkers change over the course of the book. One of the things I appreciate the most about Vantage is that while it deals with harsh things, the poems are not written for the sake of shock value; Bambrick is careful when dealing with violence and violent imagery.
I cannot recommend Vantage enough. Read this book!