Elegy: Grace Goulson

Poem to the Detroit River

BY TERRY WOLVERTON

. . . the 33 year old woman . . . leapt to her death . . .
from a crowded bridge that . . . connects Detroit . . . with its
famous island park, Belle Isle. She was trying to escape the
300-pound man whose car she had accidentally bumped into.
According to police, the man had smashed her car windows
with a tire iron, dragged her from the vehicle – stripping off
most of her clothes in the process – slammed her against the
hood of her car and pounded her with his fists. Deletha Word
. . . could not swim . . . She jumped into the water 40 feet below.

     – James Ricci, Los Angeles Times [August 31, 1995]

Not really a river at all,

but a handshake between two Great

Lakes, Huron stretching to embrace

Erie in its green-gray grasp. You

stitch the liquid boundary of

a city dismantling itself,

bricks unmortared, spires sagging, burnt

out structures razed to open field.

Prairies returning here, foxtails

and chicory, Queen Anne’s lace sways;

tumbleweeds amble down Woodward

Avenue, blow past fire hydrants,

storefronts and rusted Cadillacs.

You are the mirror into which

we plunge. Towers of a stillborn

renaissance bend to admire their

vacant beauty; automobiles

built in Mexico catch the chrome

reflection of your waves. They speed

across the bridge to the island

whose willows spill their tears against

your breast. Darkness closes our eyes;

the park empties, bridge bears a chain

of headlights. Perfume of exhaust

drifts over your blackened currents;

cars jostle for their place in line.

Not the fist of one man but

the sucker punch of a city

taking scrappy pride in its bruised

countenance. One bumper kisses

another like gunshot; the town

explodes. You swallow the blood of

a woman’s shattered cheekbone, pressed

to metal hood, scorched by engine’s

heat. Who wanna buy some of dis

bitch – she got to pay fo’ my car.

So naked in our headlights. Her

manicure rakes bridge’s edge – some

bystanders yell, Jump! – she lets go.

You catch the women who plummet

from the sky, seeking safety in

your watery clutches. They root

inside your skin; lungs swell with your

essence. Arms wrestle the eddies

but finally surrender, give

themselves fully. Guardian dog

of the bridge leans muzzle over

the rail, slavering. The whole pack

looks down, red eyes gleaming. She’s lost

to us, but we hear her singing

forever in our dreams, gurgled

lullaby for this drowned city.

Plunkett, Adam. "Poem to the Detroit River." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2014. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237610>.

This elegy, though it honors the dead, ends up also being a commentary on Detroit as a whole. It doesn't really follow the structure of a traditional elegy, in that most of the poem is a narrative. The author addresses the death of the woman by relating it back to the city itself. The entire first stanza sets the desolate scene, and the remaining three stanzas tell the awful story. I think the author does find a bit of solace in the last sentence, though: "She's lost to us, but we hear her singing forever in our dreams...." The poem is full of beautiful language and haunting imagery like "towers of a stillborn renaissance" and "sucker punch of the city." This woman's tragic death, to the author, encapsulates the deteriorating state of the "drowned city," a place where "tumbleweeds amble down Woodward Avenue" and there are "burnt out structures razed to open field." Wolverton really captures the despair in Detroit and the tragedy of the woman's death. He comments on the loss of her life as well as the loss of what once was a great city, and the reader can really understand the pain he portrays.