Life in the Undercloud

RUNWAY LIGHTS: LIFE IN THE UNDERCLOUD“Each thought, like the movement of a wing,brings flight to the mind.” Little Book Poems, IVThis book of poetry by Charles Chase, the first of four that bear the title "Runway Lights", is self-described as "series poems". Indeed, this is a key and unique feature of this book: each poem is intimately connected to at least one other poem in the collection. In some cases, the connected poems are collected together and numbered in the traditional format of a longer poem in "parts". Where this collection differs from others, however, is in the sprinkling of connected poems throughout the book, so that themes, places and characters previously encountered pages earlier suddenly reappear, like forgotten dreams. As Chase states in his prefatory notes, "In some cases, the poems in a series do not comprise a consistent narrative. The details may not agree. Nor was it necessarily my intention that they do so. In fact, months and sometimes years passed between the composition of the poems in a “series”." The effect is unique, haunting and compelling.The following comments about this book are from Gray Jacobik, recipient of the Juniper Prize, the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, the AWP Award Series in Poetry, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts:"The poems that comprise Runway Lights: Life in the Undercloud by Charles Chase are intricately bound, one to another. In terms of illumination, they are bound by a vision of existing on multiple planes of reality simultaneously. In terms of sensation, they are bound by the various emotions and textures of being a heartbreakingly sensitive, conscious animal who is observing, and aware of observing, his passage through an evolving and continuously transforming life. The poems are presented in recursive patterns, so that objects, memories, places, situations, natural elements, as well as alternative identities and ways of perceiving, become singular, and then, overlapping leitmotivs. The effect is orchestral, deeply-stirring, and ultimately, mind-blowing. “In the midnight landscape of everything that could occur,/Time, with its flashlight, passes through,/lighting some events but not others . . . “ The poet’s gaze and his words are his flashlight, yet Chase never once deludes himself: “Can we clear the field of Mind’s constructions, ourselves included? Dismantle and rebuild—a fool’s game, but the best we have.” I can’t say there isn’t value in dipping into this collection here and there, yet I urge you to read this work sequentially, for in that way its true genius steps forth. Chase’s fool’s game is a reader’s joyride: elegantly crafted, intricately complex, yet divinely simple."