If the photograph on the cover of Heat Seekers were to say the ‘thousand words’ the cliché allows it, then the words would perfectly align with the words of the poems inside. The man’s look of mild bemusement and wry confidence, paired with his defensive-offensive stance, suit the style of the collection, with poems that seem calloused, giving off an aggressive attitude, as if they are each individuals who have learned to throw fists up when faced with conflict, because they know that they will be, and have been, facing conflict.

There is some aggression in this collection, both active and passive. It feels deeply personal, like slices of the author (Steve Lambert)’s life placed down as thin sections to be viewed on a microscope slide. The cover photograph is, in fact, derived from Lambert’s own family line. It’s his grandfather, according to the poem ‘Pugilist at Best,’ which directly addresses this man with the same sort of challenging, provocative contempt found most notably in a boxing ring. This type of contempt is unique because it’s aimed at Lambert’s own family, which, in a sense, is aiming it at himself. At the same time, however, he is clear to emphasize his delineation from his grandfather, as he says, ‘I can tell your eyes were pale / blue, like no one who followed you.’ He is eager to point out that the family who came up after his grandfather were not subject to the same traits and character flaws, that they had enough agency and self-awareness to escape the fate of becoming the same way.

Did Lambert successfully escape? This question seems to persist throughout other poems, as he takes bits of history—personal and general—and examines them under modern light. Ancient Rome is juxtaposed with the East Coast in ‘The Decline,’ a poem in which the speaker and a companion travel south on U.S. Route 1, the country’s longest road running North to South, making note of what they pass. They move

through an Anglo faux Miamito,

a cracker village, by a trailer court named Frog Hollow

where hollering men in coveralls drink canned beer

and throw horseshoes.

Lambert’s lyrical, rhythmic descriptions bring shine to the grime that otherwise coats the South in his poems. In this way, he distinguishes himself not only from his family, but from this region in which he grew up. He expresses contempt for the South, or, at least, many of the poems’ tones could be read as contemptuous. He describes the South as a region filled with ‘defeated flead-out trick dens’ and ‘ghost-roach rooming homes / equal parts corruption and reclamation.’ In this poem and others, there is more honesty than flattery.

He is allowed to be honest, however, because in the same way that he’s at liberty to criticize his grandfather, he’s at liberty to criticize his own upbringing. In the title poem, he mentions how he inherits the identity of a Florida native, describing ‘how home, for most of us, is not / a decision so much as a birthright.’ In this same poem Lambert seems to say that only natives can rightfully criticize a place: the speaker overhears a woman from the north say something derogatory about the south and the people who live there, to which the speaker responds by saying, ‘For a moment, I hate her. I love it here.’ This sentiment is wonderful, and understandable, and all the more so because it only lasts for a moment.

These contradictory feelings—pride and frustration, love and hate—are explicit in several poems. In ‘Us and Them,’ the speaker tells his partner that he can’t go back to sleep because ‘the same biological imperative that says “love,” says “kill.”‘ There’s something terrifying and beautiful in this statement; the same internal inertia which draws us to intimacy also impels us to defend, and we can’t do much to stop either. In ‘Home for the Holidays,’ the speaker says that ‘Family is military / or was, hundreds of years ago,’ as if fractious family dynamics are inevitable, as if defense and self-destruction come along with intimacy.

In the same way he describes family in this example, Lambert takes what might be perceived as pleasant and shows its ugly ulteriors. In ‘The Worst Coast,’ he describes the ‘sociopathic sun’ putting down ‘its piss-yellow indifference.’ He also says that ‘This part of the state is not God’s best work,’ which makes him wonder why ‘they’re not all Atheists / instead of Baptists and Pentecostals.’ This logic is hilarious.

Other poems continue to play around with the contradictory feelings of combat and defense, love and hate, for his surroundings. The opening poem describes ‘our neighborhood’ as showing ‘the wholesale violence of conquest next to / the calculated violence of commerce.’ The speaker asserts that ‘I would / fire cannons’ from the rooftop of the house in order ‘to secure the small fortress of this drab life.’ This line shows that there’s such a strong urge to protect what he has, but also criticize it, because while the life may be drab, there’s still something at stake. The reader can’t help but want to look for what’s at stake, for what must be the beauty in the bleakness, and while there doesn’t seem to be much of this beauty in the landscape or location, the poems themselves create beautiful moments through language. Many of the poems are musical, as one describes

Mom, dad, a daughter, and four burr-headed

boys, preternaturally mean, ranging in age

from four to sixteen, who’d contracted lice

so many times their folks just kept their

heads shaved.

There’s something raw and real in this passage, and in the collection as a whole, which describes scene after scene of grit in place of glamour. The speaker of one poem describes his father wearing ‘a string of ten-hour workdays around his neck / instead of pearls.’ This poem, called ‘Double Feature,’ starts a section called ‘Devil Music.’

The entire collection is broken down into four sections, although the topics and themes overlap. ‘The Worst Coast,’ ‘Devil Music,’ ‘Nostalgia,’ and ‘The Living Ones’ separate clusters of poems, but the distinctions are blurry, which may speak more to the cohesiveness of the collection than lack of thought put into the divisions.

An example of cohesion is the repetition, with slight alteration of one line. In ‘Root Work,’ the speaker says, ‘Something not a soul is mired in me,’ and then later, talking about his family in ‘The Living Ones,’ he says, ‘Something not a soul is mired in us all.’ This final poem, ‘The Living Ones,’ is distinct from the others, as it fills its own section, follows a different pattern, and is noticeably longer. In this poem, Lambert makes explicit his familial ties to war, going back all the way to the War of 1812. It’s an almost sorrowful submission to the fate that seemed to show itself to each of his ancestors, becoming a pattern that he and his brother break. He goes to college and his ‘Brother drives a milk truck.’ Lambert almost sounds sorrowful in admitting this inevitability as well, as he describes he and his brother as ‘men envious of their father’s violence,’ which means ‘one peaceful thing / is no better than another.’ In the end, he acknowledges that ‘We peasants love our forbearers’ war like fine art,’ a sad understanding of the way in which violence is fossilized and consequently glorified. It’s a final image which echoes the first: a photograph of fists raised and eyes glazed over with the inevitability of defense, of violence.

Buy Heat Seekers (Cherry Grove Collections) here.







Author Details Rebecca Hannigan Editor Rebecca Hannigan graduated from the University of the South, where she received the Bain Swiggett Prize for Poetry and attended the Writers’ Conference as a scholar. She’s a junior editor for Brink, a literary nonprofit that publishes ‘F(r)iction’. Her fiction has been published in ‘The Rumpus,’ ‘Juked,’ ‘Wigleaf,’ and elsewhere (rebeccahannigan.wordpress.com).



