Sundress Reads: Review of The Harvesters

Kristen Staby Rembold’s The Harvesters (FutureCycle Press, 2023) delivers all of the beauty of the pastoral without sentimentality. Captured in smaller moments, the collection widely deals with the complexities of nostalgia, especially as it pertains to rural life. Rembold’s writing fully encapsulates farm life, resulting in stunning imagery like that in “Conversion”: “Across the grass, the surface of threadleaf / flowers, teased by the / breeze, / becomes a surface of sparkling. / Come, golden sunbeam, red-tailed / hawk flying, deep October sky” (68). However, simple beauty doesn’t often paint the whole picture. The people in The Harvesters are real men, women, and children living full, and sometimes brutal, lives. Their livelihood cultivates not only food, but a way of life.

Dropping readers in a space and keeping them there through to the end of the collection, Rembold offers a profound sense of place. Abandoned barns, empty stairwells, and unkempt fields set the stage early on. Images of fields and farmland abound, and we get to know families, friends, and communities via their land. Though not listed on a specific map, the collection tells distinct stories. In “Thanatopsis,” the land simultaneously feels like a cemetery and a sanctuary. Rembold writes, 

The roots of the relationship between people and earth run deep: there are no people without the land and no land without the people. 

The Harvesters cultivates a deep relationship with all kinds of work, especially among women workers. “Scissors and Thread” lists their many tasks—“Seeding, growing, canning, cleaning, / cooking, sewing, quilting, children”—but this work does not fix everything (Rembold 37). In fact, this poem’s speaker looks up to a woman, perhaps a family member, imploring her to “lift [her] brow, stop / for one moment, stop and see [them]” (Rembold 37). While these women toil to survive, it can come at its own cost. In many cases, however, work is not only the best choice, but the only choice. 

Many of Rembold’s poems address history, enriching these places in new meaning. “Historic Churchyard” tells of an abandoned church whose grounds are mysteriously kept up. Though their identity is unknown, the person clearing the vines and keeping the church walls clean is “someone whose remembrance / has become observance, like God’s vigilance, / prayer as a kind of seeing” (Rembold 25). The poem forges the familiar connection between someone and somewhere, using the setting to shed light on the people. In “Searching for an Artifact Beneath Composting Leave,” for example, the person is doing the digging rather than being what is dug up. Found artifacts, like an old hook or chain, call an unnamed child back to a time well beyond his memory. It speaks to the youth’s yet undefined purpose, using a place’s history to illuminate meaning in life. 

The Harvesters celebrates and illuminates the rural space, including the bonds between people and their neighbors. In “Troubles,” a group of women work on their neighbor’s farms whenever the circumstances call them. Whether their “friend’s illness, a son’s unhappy marriage, /  [or] a father’s syncope” prevented someone from being able to care for their own land, these women would always step in, working in tandem and without complaint (Rembold 38). Though not explicitly stated, it stands to reason that these absent neighbors would do the same for them. These poems often reflect on absences, helping the speaker appreciate the temporary lights shone on her life by others. 

Haunting and dreamy, the poem’s closing section deals heavily with ideas of past vs. present and youth vs age. In this section, it feels as though the people and the land reminisce together. “Late Visit” examines the passage of time as it relates to a daughter who has left home years ago, only to return later. The poem opens and closes with the memory of the house Irish Setters, and the poem sits in the contrast between the past and present. Against the woman’s memories of a bright, loving, dog-filled house, her mother’s house is now dull, silent, and ghostly. Grief and loss plague the land of The Harvesters; nostalgia seems to light up the past and darken the present. These growing pains appear as specters, yet there is nothing unnatural here: the ghosts of the past make up yet another part of life.

Who are The Harvesters? They are farmers, homemakers, carpenters, and more. This collection is their namesake, and it pays its deepest respects to the land, its people, and the experiences in between. The pendulum between beauty and devastation transforms the relationships between people and place. It is not often we know precisely who we read about, but we understand the bonds they have with those around them. This results in a cyclical relationship, where people become a part of the land, land becomes part of the people, and from this, poetry is born. 

The Harvesters is available at FutureCycle Press.

---

Whitney Cooper holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University, where they served as editor-in-chief of Jelly Bucket, the graduate literary journal run by the university. They also work as a reader for Atlanta Review. A clerical error was made while earning their bachelor’s degree, and they have been passionate about poetry ever since. Their poetry appears in Glassworks Magazine, Stillpoint Literary Magazine, and others. They live in metro Atlanta with their wife, cat, and miniature schnauzer mix.