The Meaning of Leaving, Kate Rogers
AOS Publishing, 2024
Many of the poems in The Meaning of Leaving, byKate Rogers, speak to the idea of our own transience as humans. We evolve fromone person into another as we gain various life experiences, moving through theyears with seemingly increased speed as we get older. The tone of thecollection is established with the inclusion of a fitting quotation from Bashowhich both makes a statement and poses a philosophical question: “I am a crow riding the wind./…Where will Iland?” This could be a literal or metaphorical wondering, depending on how it’sinterpreted by the reader. Beyond the ways in which humans change during theirtime on earth, though, Rogers also broaches themes of survival, exploration,and curiosity. The poems in The Meaning of Leaving are also about figuringout when it’s time to leave something, somewhere, or someone—even if it’s very difficultwhile you’re doing it.
Early in the book, Rogers writes about intimatepartner violence, depicting the intense struggle and trauma of it in well-craftedand cutting poems like “Derrick’s Fist” and “The Passing of Sean Connery.” Inthe first poem, the speaker says that her first husband’s fist finds itselfplanted “in the orbit of my right eye,” and that there is a “Molar fractured”at the same time. The poem records the fading of the bruising afterwards,documenting its shift in colour and healing from red to yellow over the courseof a week. In the second poem, the speaker addresses domestic abuse as acatalyst to her departure from a marriage: “When you punched me in the eye/thepain cleared my vision.” Years later, after her ex-husband’s death, the speaker’smind reveals even more violent memories that had been hidden away in her mind:“You dragged me/by my hair across our Hong Kong flat,/the herring bone parquetfloor/etched my cheek./Splinters lodged in my thighs.” The speaker’s departurefrom that part of her life ushers in a welcome new beginning.
There’s a marked shift from the first section of thebook to the later ones. The poet explores the idea of what it means to leave alife behind—in terms of moving continents, but also with reference to movingaway from domestic abuse and into newer, healthier relationships. In a seriesof vivid and evocative Hong Kong-based poems, Rogers paints a picture of whatit was like to live in China for twenty years. In “Twenty Years in the People’sRepublic of China,” the speaker is told that she must begin to think that“Tiananmen never happened,” as a supervisor warns the new teacher not to speakup or voice her western-influenced opinion in this new place. In “Migration,”the speaker refers to pro-democracy protestors as if they are black moths,their “black-clad bodies/swarm the streets” while one “trembles/on a windowledge,/framed by a police spotlight.” When taking attendance in her class thenext day, she worries that all of her students may not be present. Nothingfeels safe inside the world of this Hong Kong, despite the beauty that isconveyed in the earlier poems that depict walks in the nature conservationareas near the city.
Migration is a common theme in The Meaning ofLeaving, with the poet paying close attention to the world around her. Hertravels, and her immersion in various cultures, result in richly imagisticpoems that build worlds for the reader to sink into. Her return to Canada fromHong Kong means that she is even more aware of the sharp social contrastsoffered up for consideration. In “Daphne and I Walk Beside the Don River,” thespeaker writes of an unhoused man who lives in a “tent beside the bridge,”wondering how he can sleep through nearby construction. In “Moss ParkEncampment,” the poet writes of “three tatty nylon tents” and two men“seated/on plastic milk crates/in front of the tents.” Beyond that, there is a“body on the sidewalk” and police officers pulling “a tarp/over his hair.” Froma distance, the “body under the tarp/[is] a question mark.” In China, there arethreats to anyone who is vocally supportive of democracy in a society thatdoesn’t espouse it. In Canada, there are other types of threats to socialwelfare and well-being, ones that make the reader consider whether one sort ofoppression and cruelty is any better than another.
There is also great beauty in so many of thesepoems—from the Zen gardens and plum blossoms that are described in “The ji*zoShrine,” to the sweet love poem, “Love Song, Edinburgh,” to the references tokintsugi, the traditional Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery withbits of gold. In “Stop! Covid-19!”, the poet writes of “male red-wingedblackbirds” that call out, “their yellow/and scarlet epaulettes/splashedamong/last summer’s reeds.” In “Black Cloud,” there is a murmuration ofstarlings above a lake, distracting the walker from the threat of other humanwalkers who may carry the Covid-19 virus. The poem ends with the speakersaying, hopefully, “I want to know/birds will survive/the human plague./I wantthem/to be pilgrims forever.” The certainty of the birds’ continued presenceduring the pandemic lockdown offers the speaker great comfort, and she findsthat her personal uncertainty is calmed by walking outside.
In the darkest times, Rogers seems to be saying,humans should look for beauty wherever they can find it— whether it be in thefeeling of freedom that comes after escaping domestic abuse, or in the glimpseof birds that rise above the chaos of the human world, or just in letting go totrust the journey of life rather than trying to decipher it. In the end, TheMeaning of Leaving is about how we should fight for the ideas and valuesthat most matter, especially freedom from abuse or oppression. Perhaps, too,Rogers is also asking us, as readers, to consider what the notion of leavingmeans to us in our own lives, suggesting that we take a closer look at what wemost value and what we most need to protect.
Kim Fahner lives and writesin Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest full collection of poems is Emptying theOcean (Frontenac House, 2022) and she's just published a poetry chapbook, FaultLines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023). She is the FirstVice-Chair for The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the Leagueof Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.Kim's first novel, The Donoghue Girl, will be published by Latitude 46Publishing in Fall 2024. She may be reached via her author website atwww.kimfahner.com
