Shivani Jaiswal Reviews Door by Ann Lauterbach

Ann Lauterbach is a poet, essayist, writer, and professor.  A New Yorker by birth, Lauterbach teaches at Bard College and co-directs the Writing Division of the MFA program. In addition to her newest work, Door, Lauterbach has written ten collections of poetry and three collections of essays. Her eighth book of poems, Or to Begin Again, was nominated for the National Book Award. Her work has received recognition from fellowships such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. Lauterbach’s work catches the attention of readers through her mastery of syntactical freedom and complexity of thought in each poem.

Door, Lauterbach’s most recent collection of poems, delves into the exploration of the elusive “Door” as not only an entrance and exit of spaces but rather as a rite of passage into another dimension. Some of the worlds explored in Door include biblical and fable-like gardens and pastures in poems such as “Garden” and “Fable of the Barn,” while poems such as “Habitat” and “Untitled (Crow)” poke at the technological, dystopian world that awaits.

This juxtaposition of sceneries aids the messaging of the topic being discussed in each poem. For example, Lauterbach connects the passing of a sister to the demise of the earth in a doomsday-esque vision in “Untitled (Crow).” Lauterbach writes:

“...dear sister, 

loud blade dismantling

a maple, limb by limb, is

not a metaphor although could become. 

The dismantled limbs, 

a cry from above, staggered

across the bloom of no time 

which you might have overheard

through the flames heating our 

world, which we, assembled, caused.” 

Drawing from these vulnerable experiences, Lauterbach is not limited to the exploration of different dimensions of dream and reality. Door provides a discussion about the pain and sorrow that can come from transition. This collection features multiple poems titled “Door,” each transitioning the collection to a new theme. In “Door (The Said Closes),” this current of heartbreak and angst manifests itself.

“Is Door a wound?

Farther still, the hall is dark”  

This poem is closely followed by “Fable of the Barn” which includes:

“This adventure hurts my heart, someone

said uneasily, crossing the bridge”  

These poems touch on the same theme of the pain of adjusting to the new and the unexplored. Lauterbach uses the idea of “Door” to her advantage to show the trauma that can be caused at the expense of reaching “Door.” It is not just a safe space where one can leave and enter as they wish, but sometimes, it can be a painful reminder that conditions are not the same as they were. The darkness engulfs the reader so that Lauterbach can guide them to see her understanding of the “Door” to which this pathway leads. 

Another theme that runs through the collection is that of seeing versus doing. This battle between inaction preceded by attendance is shown through the collection in “Door (The Said Closes),” “Ethos,” and “The Belated.” These poems interconnect through their emphasis on the human flaw of seeing but not doing anything to remedy a problem present in the world. 

“Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head 

And pretend that he just doesn’t see?” 

“...We see and

we say, but what do we do? This question

sits, like a huge stone on top of modernity’s ethos”  

“Nothing fits today among the orphaned 

kids sweltering in tents as the shamed

world turns and blisters and sings. 

Look away! Look away! Seek not” 

The questions Lauterbach poses allow the reader to ruminate over the differences between observation and intervention. Lauterbach marvels at the apathy of the current world and how children in deplorable conditions can go ignored because of the mentality of not taking action unless a problem is directly affecting someone personally ingrained in modern society’s culture. This relates to the overall idea of “Door” through the intersection of the obscured and the malleable. Lauterbach also notes “appearance” as “betrayal” in “Dis.” The superficial unapproachability of a subject may prevent an individual from seeing it as being worthy of addressing, but that is a betrayal to the individual based on the reality of the situation. This question also poses a call to action to her readers concerning political action, social justice, and environmental justice. Lauterbach continues this activism in “Song (Ukraine)” which paints the commotion around the world on the streets for the tragedies occurring in Ukraine through powerful imagery and leading rhymes in hopes of a resolution. 

Lauterbach’s smaller details create a tone that resonates throughout the entirety of the collection. She uses the word “filmic” to capture the relationship between movement and disappearance in poems such as “Door (Let’s Explore),” “The Belated,” and “The Blue Door.” This recurrence of the word “filmic” adds a cohesive element of language to the poetry. Another word that is inserted in multiple poems is “episodic,” so mixed with the language of “filmic,” an air of cinema and saga is cultivated. “Door” is not just a short-lived idea but a consistent series of larger-than-life images. 

Lastly, Door explores Lauterbach’s identity in a way that feels new as it reaches from different perspectives. In “Door (And Then We Fell),” Lauterbach writes:

“What is this story? Legend has it

she traveled alone so that she could see

everything more clearly. What she saw” 

This description of herself as a character contrasts with that in “Ethos”:

“... he 

must think I am an old woman who forgets

more than a passcode. He has dark hair”  

Lauterbach plays with the idea of perspective through this juxtaposition of poems whether it be through seeing herself through the eyes of legend or through the youthful figure in her poem whom she refers to as “Joe from Verizon.” “Door” can be shut or open on the identity and sense of self that an individual possesses, but Lauterbach hints that it is more in between the passage of exit and entrance. 

Overall, this collection of poems is a delightful read and a great representation of dreams and reality in the modern world. 

Shivani Jaiswal was a Spring 2023 Editorial Assistant at Hayden's Ferry Review. She was a student of Barrett, the Honors College, and graduated with concurrent degrees in Social Work and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She is the 2019 recipient of the Samantha Stachel Play Big scholarship and the 2020 recipient of the Department of English scholarship.  Shivani spent the 2022-2023 academic year studying abroad at Royal Holloway, University of London. During her final year at ASU, she was a school social work intern for Peoria Unified School District as well as an intern for Hayden’s Ferry Review.