Martha Ronk - Vertigo

Martha Ronk is one of our great poets, along with Michael Palmer and few others, of the economy of perception. The way the sentence changes in just the way—or an enactment of the way—our perception changes regarding the scene, so that the reader is continually waking through the veils of that place:

One tries to get through, French doors somersaulted into,
the door as a way into it was about evening then.

It’s a project of elemental engagement with being in the world, within the actions of being in the world. And it just thrills me, like a rollercoaster ride through a still life.

Her newest book is Vertigo.


“The grayness of the early hours lasted almost until noon”



The crows are always there if this is where one lives.
So much for the principal parts of the story.
But it was not until two weeks later
I wrote about the birds, getting no response,
whereas in fact all is determined
by the most complex of interdependencies.
I told her they always woke me up when I was there
and she noted them but said she always slept through.
Then she began to acquire a bit more definition
later in the day and after I moved where the crows
from the gray cloud had done everything together
in the most ominous way. The association of the two
seems to have to do with sleeplessness,
with how so much earlier keeps hanging on.