Both Boys Climb Trees They Can’t Climb Down

Both Boys Climb Trees They Can’t Climb Down is Stephanie Yorke’s homage to lost homes. The poems in the collection commemorate a home that is at turns too ugly to look at, and too profound to ignore. The remembered home is both a depleted space where women climb flimsy ladders/ to rag and harangue mildew from awnings/ over the doors, and a potent space where a volcano spits like a roast pig/ initial ash on your window.

Yorke approaches her subject obliquely, giving a monolithic topic the sidelong glance it demands: home looms on the periphery as different speakers offer their far-flung or down-to-earth versions of the past. The opening poem establishes the contrast between nostalgic and pragmatic temperaments that will be developed in relief to one another, as the irreconcilable manias of regret and memory compete for dominance. Pop culture and art – ranging from Steve Urkel’s greeting to Lawren Stewart Harris’ paintings – are important to the development of the small town environment, but lived experience and vernacular stories remain key. The lost home, be it precious or repugnant, is like a coin in a shallow pond: / brighter once it’s thrown.