Life churns forth in a steady ticking of time, ideals rise and fall, harvest season comes and goes, and grief, happiness, loneliness all play a part in painting the colors of our memories. To read Stella Beratlis’s Dust Bowl Venus is to walk the soil, hear the music, and explore the history of the golden state: California. “I’m wired and woven into the tapestry,/ rebuilding this heart with clay and time” (A Unified Theory of Everything While Listening to Science Friday).

From historical figures like Anthony Wayne Comstock to varieties of tomatoes, Dust Bowl Venus explores the connection between the physical world, history, and ourselves. Through her use of imagery, interspersed song lyrics, and American symbolism, Beratlis fashions a book of distinctly Western-America Gothic poems that explores humanity’s tether to the world around us.

because tonight my heart is busting from loneliness
and the thought of your infusion
in a fluorescent room with nondescript others
that turns out to be a place of invention
where you experiment with the world’s credulity
and answer questions with such guile and ease”
                                                            (Instant Message With Broken Glass)

Interestingly, Beratlis infuses her original writing with lyrics from the classic American songwriter Hazel Houser. These reflective pauses lend the book its tint of gothic symbolism; Houser being a gospel/folk songwriter. The darker gothic tones appear in “Memory Gardens, Livermore” saying the cemetery “wants our release from grief, wants the collapse of time,/ wants us to quit stepping on the dead/ with our large, impertinent feet.” These also combine with the references to historical architecture of the region to paint an overlapping picture of Northern California: as if a camera had taken multiple exposures to document the history under each layer.

Dust Bowl Venus pivots from the intriguing daily life of places like Modesto and Sacramento to the worship of nature. In “Walking in the Park, We Are Beset by Insects” Beratlis writes “as we hover/ and beat our wings/ inside the algebra of insects,/ creating our own clumsy arcs/ and perfect disturbance.” In capturing the majesty, subtle violence, and mystery of dragonflies Beratlis also catches the mysticism and connection with the human soul. She sees them not as completely separate entities but as beings that communicate secrets about her own existence. To this date, the vast state of California retains a connection to its wild nature; a cool mysteriousness that pervades daily life. The extensive forests and the populations of human beings are like two images in a mirror attempting to understand one another.

Lastly, the poem “A Dream About Steinhart Aquarium” illustrates Beratlis’s ability to weave two motifs together; giving the poem a feeling of shifting tides that recall the ocean, “their bodies oscillating/ in salt and honey waves, the thick/ glass concealing them from aquatic life.” Again, one can see the connection between human existence and the physical world; yet, the glass denotes the slight barrier that keeps human beings from completely understanding the places that lie just beyond. According to Dust Bowl Venus, the mysteries will continue, life will flow forward, countries will change, and the most intriguing fact about all of it is mankind’s constant inability to fully comprehend it. Leaving each sweet, lonely, enigmatic experience to “haunt this tiny house” of our memories (Inventory of Household Items).