Jennifer MacBain-Stephens to Sarah Ann Winn

In Sarah Ann Winns chapbook Portage, to journey is by nature to lose. Winns first poem,
Alma, portrays a picturesque childhood street. We see the lush Baldwin apple trees in bloom,
we hear children on bicycles whizz past on the sidewalk. We smell the rain from the open screen
door. Winns speaker is an explorer, a collector of oddities and experiences. The beginning poem
is a fairy tale setting, depicting a natural setting, able to convert even staunch urbanites to move
to the country. Winn writes:
Gorge of girl, shaped by erosion,
gorgeous, engorged by trees.
Pitted by tart cherries giving over to sweetness
transformed by weeds turned into dandelion salad,
shored up by life on lakes which were named for carrying.
I was made to portage, by Portage, a girl raised by reservoirs,
lifted from one lake and carried to the next,
made to find joy in journeys
I sorted the wheat pennies from copper chaff
kept in a wooden bowl. I counted.
The number of pennies
how far from Alma I still must go.
The poems words bounce with the whimsy of a young girl walking (running?) down Alma
Avenue, open to adventure. She knows she must leave her street eventually, in turn leaving
childhood behind, yet there is a sense she doesnt want to shed this cocoon. Something beckons
her, however, and she musters up courage again and again.
Every poem describes or completes a journey. Whether through ones memories, on bike, by car,
or by foot, the path is present, though not always well lit. In the concise prose poem Out, the
dark scenery is ticked off in detail, like symbols on a map, or maybe an x-ray. The first line of
the poem offers brevity: Running out of gas in West Virginia at midnight is an act of God.
Winn illustrates a dark shadow filled night:
No use to start walking now. Nothing is open. The waterfall is somewhere
nearby, but unlit by the new moon, we could only get close enough to fall in, and
still see nothing but the wet dark
In the last two lines of Out Winn alludes to men trapped in a mine collapse. Through
foreboding sentences we are reminded that travel and movement, bring consequences: Think
about those men underground. Theyre stuck as we are, and even once theyre out, may never get
out.

Stated so distinctly, Winn depicts how our circumstances will always shape us, never stop
molding us, long after adulthood. She illustrates the idea of being stuck where we are literally
and figuratively. How can we escape? Or what if we try to leave and in the end, we cannot:
places and people are ingrained upon us. Winn plays the sage, knowing this truth, yet wields a
playfulness using lovely detailed language throughout Portage.
An example of her stellar descriptive imagery is seen in Mandala. The speaker rides a teal
bicycle carrying a backpack full of red yarn and collecting license plates. It took years, but she
collected each state, like baseball cards. She puts them in her sack, keeps moving. Winn writes:
The white seat challenged her, so she took from her pocket a bottle of cherry
nail polish, and painted over the plastic with careful paisleys. With the license
plates, she fashioned a suit of armor for the bicycle, turning it into a lean samurai
tank with curly red yard bows, a look achieved through unraveling twenty red
sweaters, only one made for the bull on Wall Street
We are instantly in this world, where the samurai bike is now parked at the top of the North
Pole and the she is perusing her bottle cap collection.
She has a favorite bottle cap that reads Jolt! on the top, which Winn writes: It looked like a
small prayer.
She carries a mantra of Jolt! in her palm, reflecting the robust energy of childhood but also
how quickly life changes and jolts us into the next chapter. One such chapter is seen in Lunar
Distances, one poem representing the end of a journey, the end of lucid thought.
The reader feels the linear measuring from A to B grow vast in this poem, as well as our
recognition of mortality.
If I follow to the root
our family, the Baldwins crooked branches,
will it end deep in Heaven, or on South Main
at the Haven of Rest Home for the Indigent?
The starkness of this ideathese brute lines conveying the bend of street stopping at an assisted
care facility, holds the mirror up to our own faces, our fragility, and also the unpredictability of
life, the lack of control we possess. One moment we are enjoying the shade of an apple tree and
the next we might have to call a single, pastel colored room home. A similar idea is described
in Delayed Exposure, Close to Home. Winn writes:
Her gram cannot tell
it straight. Her body leads
her backwards, away
from poise.
Cannot tell square from
crooked, cannot tell

it straight. Her thoughts

white unbalanced in another
Place shapes us, seeps into our bodies, (like the West Virginia Night, or the apple tree lined
street, or bicycling down the same hill every day, ) Winn repeats several images in this
collection: hammer and nails, broken pieces (earthenware,) roots, and apples. It is the small
objects we live with, discard, rediscover, receive as gifts, which weld our humanity into place.
The reader travels along with Winns poems from cycling, to shared time with her Gram, to
communing with her sister. In Braeburn Apple we taste the laughter of the speaker sharing an
apple with her sister. They share a bite, there is a crispness in the air, in the taste, as well as the
mention of a bruise. It is fleetingthis time shared, like the small fruit, the moment is now gone.
Even memories change, are warped. It is the journey that matters, nothing else. The destination
is secondary. Along the way, Winn catalogs it all, takes notes through her words, and helps us
realize, with tremendous empathy, no beauty goes to waste here. (from Baldwin Apples.)
**
Portage was the runner-up of the 2014 Sundress chapbook contest. Its available as a free
download from Sundress.

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens went to NYUs Tisch School of the Arts and lives in the D.C. area
with her family. She is the author of six chapbooks. The most recent ones are forthcoming from
Dancing Girl Press, Crisis Chronicles Press and Shirt Pocket Press. Her first full-length poetry
collection is forthcoming from Lucky Bastard Press. Recent work can be seen /is forthcoming
at, Pretty Owl Poetry, Yes, Poetry, Gargoyle Magazine, Jet Fuel Review, Glittermob, Pith, So to
Speak, Apple Valley Review, Otis Nebula, Freezeray, Enclave, and Hobart. For more, visit:
http://jennifermacbainstephens.wordpress.com/.