Dancing Room Only by Jim Reese – A Review by Maryellen Groot

October 4th, 2024

Dancing Room Only by Jim Reese
A Review by Maryellen Groot
Soundings East Volume 46 2024

Dancing Room Only, by Jim Reese
NYQ, 2024
156 Pages

For many of us on the old east coast, mentions of the American heartland instantly conjure treasured images of an endless breadbasket capable of nourishing an exploding nation. Amber waves of grain undulating outwards from our center, an ocean of grass so vast conquistadors had to use a sea compass to navigate it. As the story goes, our national heart beats in the Midwest because it is fed there, nourished there, and has space to conceal itself. Americans cling tight to these images of the heartland and its rural charm because they seek to remind us who we are and where we’ve been, perhaps as we spin out of control. The story of an agricultural, rough-hewn nation turned into a well-oiled, global machine belongs to all of us, and provides a sensational backdrop to Jim Reese’s poems. In them, a war is waged between country and capital. Reese, his neighbors, his students, and his readers are caught in the crossfire. Reese stands in the middle: an observer, a teacher, a lover and father, a sort of pilgrim or plainland prophet in street clothes.

In his latest collection, Dancing Room Only, Reese pulls back the fabled golden curtains to tell us exactly which “MID Heart WEST Land” he hails from:

I’m from shit-on-a-shingle and classic prep Kraft Mac and Cheese.
From the split-level, tuck-under, two-car-garage houses of the urban
MID Heart WEST Land. I am from a weeping willow tree, Bugeaters
and fields of dreams and oats—long stretches of interstate, watching
the thin line run long. I’m from lowa, Nebraska, South
Dakota, dirt pasture, 95 percent of this region is soybeans, sows,
silos—corn, grain bins and cows…I’m from watching men
I admire climb the corporate ladder of American greed and discover
chasing paper isn’t what it’s all about.

His form—free-verse and rolling—transports me to that mythic place. I am left asking: what, then, is it all about? Reese himself reveals in “Jockeying for a Mate” that this image is, at best, a facade.

The cover of the new Jockey catalog captures
a man and woman wearing pajamas in a wheat field.
I can’t tell what country they’re standing in, much less
what state. The clouds look familiar, but it’s barbed wire

and round bales here. To be honest, I can’t remember
the last sea of wheat I’ve stood in.

At worst, Reese shows, it’s a marketing technique. His careful use of enjambment leaves a fascinating and unfinished taste in my mouth, lending to a deep sense of placelessness in the pristine fields of The Heartland™. To find the real, bloody, beating heart once again, I must follow Reese to less familiar places: to riverbeds where he searched on all fours for nightcrawlers with his grandfather, to the urban Midwest with its raucous bars full of farmers, and, finally, to Vernon’s place, where the bar owner and neighborhood staple forever chased his “ten penny high.” Vernon appears so often in Reese’s poems that I came to know and love him, too. In “Strike on the Stoop,” Reese narrates,

When Vernon said to hell with it
and decided not to stand in line
at the corner to see if he could
get himself some work, you knew it
was going to be one of those days.

Solly, wearing his girlfriend’s bikini
briefs and two different socks, came out
on the stoop to see for himself.
If you ain’t going, I ain’t either.

There is a deep fraternity at the bottom for Reese’s neighbors and companions: a closeness and intimacy that may be forced, reluctant, and begrudging, but still always there. Reese uses moments of dialogue to both capture and commemorate his muses, often non-traditional sources of wisdom. In doing so, he reveals the prophet that exists within us all. Reese closes the loop on the narrative in “Vernon is Taking the Dirty Dog Home” when he writes,

When you, Vernon,
board that Greyhound bus to the halfway house,
keep your head high. With smart time,
you’ll have only six months to go.

Here, Reese’s humanistic ethos is on full display: he refuses to discard imperfect people or their words. I imagine him writing down these snippets of conversation as they occur, filling notebooks until he has the right poem to place them in. It’s a Midwestern trait that Reese lauds above all else in “Leftovers,” “A Bag of Apples,” and “The Keeper of All Things Whole and Necessary,” who

Puts leftover food in little plastic
baby food containers and yogurt cups
she has saved. Will leave half a chicken
wing for someone else to eat. Wraps up
and refrigerates one slice of bacon.
Puts lemon juice on half an apple
so it won’t turn brown. Washes and saves
straws with holes and plastic silverware
with broken tines. Has a drawer full of mustard,
barbeque and soy sauce packages from take-out restaurants.
//
Once I saw her pull a tarp for a pick-up
bed out from underneath her dresser:
I’ve been holding on to this,
I don’t know how long.

I could say the very same about Reese and the moments of wisdom he curates from his community. This is part of what bothers Reese so much about the prisons–-formerly universities—at which he teaches writing. Such places, full of America’s discarded citizens, their minds still active and questioning but left to rot, seem to disturb Reese to his core. Reese, a humanist but also a pragmatist, rightfully can’t find a way to justify the waste. He takes it upon himself to do all that he is capable of: his part. In the finale of “Vernon is Taking the Dirty Dog Home,” Reese explains,

I’ve been instructed never
to get too close to any inmate. But I’m your teacher,
and I’m afraid that’s just not possible. Tonight,
like most nights, I carry you home.

The simple syntax combined with careful enjambment creates a subtle yet powerful sense of possibility combined with weighty responsibility. Reese carries me into the next line just as he carries his work into the following day. I soon realize he has become my teacher, too. Once inside, Reese brings me face to face with the true American dream:

It’s nine o’clock and, for two hours,
if Willow doesn’t wake, this time is ours.
The cool buzz of the baby monitor,
the cheesy brats bursting on the grill,
the gurgle and kiss.

The heart of America, as it turns out, cannot be found in a wide expansive field or a long, free stretch of time or highway. Instead, it’s found in the slivers, the snippets, the leftovers, and the neighbors on the corner muttering to each other who, without Reese, I just might blink and miss.

Maryellen Groot is the author of “Felix and the Flying Tiger,” awarded “Best Essay” at the 2023 Master’s in English Regional Conference and recently published with Bridgewater State University’s The Graduate Review. Her non-fiction has appeared with Vox and Racked. She is a graduate of Bard College and soon-to-be graduate of Salem State University.