Local author Anne-Marie Oomen steers us on a journey of discovery

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor
When Anne-Marie Oomen found the book International Code of Signals in the lifesaver’s museum at Glen Haven in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, she “was fascinated by these hundreds of codes to guide the ships and sailors,” she recalls. The book, prepared and published by the Defense Mapping Agency of the U.S. government in 1993, includes letters and combinations of letters for the semaphores used at sea to alert other ships what is happening on board, such as UT: “where are you bound for?”
Anne-Marie, who chairs the Creative Writing Department at Interlochen Arts Academy and lives near Empire, started using the codes as prompts for poetry. Codes like PR1: “you should come as near as possible” and D: “keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty,” were perfect ways to write, not about ships and sailors, but about everyday life and the moods that everyone experiences. As she wrote her poems from the codes, a persona sprung from the page, a character complete with her own story. And so the book, un-coded woman, was born.

Un-coded woman, published last year by Milkweed Editions, tells the story of a young woman named Beatrice (Bead for short), and her life near Lake Michigan. Each poem gets its name from the codes in International Code of Signals. The first poem, titled KS1: “I Have Taken the Line,” describes the meeting of Bead and her boyfriend Barn, on her journey away from the south. From this poem Bead embarks on a journey of discovery and the beauty of life, through poems and the ever-present message of the codes, Anne-Marie says. “They’re poems but they tell a story, which is interesting because we think of poetry as telling the truth.” Anne-Marie has certainly created an original book, and browsing through it will convince the reader that all stories could be told through poems. The details are condensed and concise, just enough for the reader to understand the plot and enjoy a lovely poem at the same time.
Un-coded woman is Anne-Marie’s first book of poems and follows two memoirs, Pulling Down the Barn (2004, Wayne State University Press) and House of Fields (2006, Wayne State University Press), all of which are available at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor and other local bookstores. Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields were recognized as Michigan Notable Books. Pulling Down the Barn revisits her childhood on a farm in downstate Oceana County, whereas House of Fields is about her education and was published at nearly the same time as un-coded woman last fall. After Pulling Down the Barn became a Michigan Notable Book in 2005, Anne-Marie was urged to write another memoir quickly, which led to House of Fields. The award eased her road to publishers. “The first book was sent out a lot and there were so many close calls,” says Anne-Marie, remembering the rejection letters albeit with encouraging notes inside from the editors. “Then it is like a wall that you break or a door that finally opens, and the second two were much easier to find homes for,” she explains why her two most recent books shot into the market. “And I think I’ve gained confidence in how to talk to editors and publishers.”
Anne-Marie’s current project is another memoir, this time of her travels and experiences away from home, and has the working title of Finding my America. This is a book of “essays of place” from what Anne-Marie calls her days as a bohemian. She is very excited about her new project, which she claims is her favorite work to date. “I think we all learn about ourselves [when we write] but I think that these new essays about place are my favorite right now,” she attests, which makes sense since travel is such a huge inspiration.
But travel and events aren’t the only sources of Anne-Marie’s inspiration. “Most of all language inspires me, language used well, used in unique and different and fresh ways” she says, “it just gets me going.” And chairing the Creative Writing Department at Interlochen doesn’t hurt, since during the school year she meets every day with writers of every age and background, who often feed her muse.
Anne-Marie, who also founded the Dunes Review literary magazine and is one of the founders of the Beach Bards Bonfire poetry circle, recently returned from a six-week trip to Maine, which she used as a writing retreat. She rented a cabin there and took advantage of the alone time, without distractions, to work on her current project.
“I’ve always been what I call a scribbler,” Anne-Marie says. “I think everybody, I hope everybody has a way of coming to self expression, writing is mine. It is the lens through which I see the world.” Anne-Marie didn’t become serious about writing until her 30s when her first marriage ended. Since then she has written many plays, chapbooks of poems and essays. Her play Northern Belles has been performed around the Midwest.
But writing wasn’t always easy for her. One chapter in House of Fields deals with her struggle to learn to read and her obsession with it when she finally gets the knack. Yes that’s right, Anne-Marie Oomen once trailed the rest of the class in reading.
Anne-Marie is certainly one of the most important writers in northern Michigan for both her talent and her versatility in describing the northern life through poems and prose. We look forward to her next new book, written in a familiar voice, narrating the world away from home.
Poems from un-coded woman, by Anne-Marie Oomen
Milkweed Editions, 2006
00
My Radio Direction is Inoperative
For a while, running away blooms yellow as cucumber
with that scent that cleans like rain,
but in the end all you’re doing is getting lost
all over, and for all those miles and road meals,
it doesn’t stop the wish like a hard kiss
to know why the screen door slammed,
why the bruise of Mama’s hands never hurt me,
why the mast of Daddy’s limbs always did,
or why I am named Beatrice.
It’s like this: Just when I think memory is tucked
into some shotgun with the safety on,
that delicate odor of cucumber goes tacking
on the wind; then there’s the forced kiss
of remembering, a cracked-ice click just
before all the guns go off at once.
For short, they call me Bead —
a thing so small it should be forgotten.
B
I Am Discharging Dangerous Goods
I toss the ruddy roe
into the weedy current —
nothing as gone
as the look of eggs
spreading like a sheer cloud
in river wash.
The fish eat the roe.
I know I am part of it,
but not the part I want to be.
Folks will never say,
but I am the second sound,
letter that comes after,
long-haired woman,
tosser of eggs,
charged with danger
and knowing —
a million tiny golden apples —
or stars — ticking their soft
if, if, if.
BL
I Am Having Engine Trouble, but Am Continuing …
Pickup stalls on Snitch Road, engine dead.
My headlights can the night, sight
a critter climbing through osier.
She waddles the ditch,
slips into shallows. My beams toss back
her gloss, then just her wake.
One of the last in these parts.
Talk to me, I whisper.
I want to know:
Will you stop the creek,
shape one of those wide ponds
bordered with stump poplar?
Will you burrow under, hollow
out the mud? Build a fortress of
the lost ifs and dead maybes.
Geesh. Questions cheesy as old frosting.
Beaver’s Gone. Truck engine flares.
I backfire my way home.
Darkness just gets darker,
keeps its secret animal
invisible as the trouble some call love.
RI
There Is Good Holding Ground in My Area
For a while, no dead fish
stinking up the shore
and sleep is a fine new weather.
On the high ground, he runs a fence
to keep out deer. I plant tomatoes, beans,
collard greens I crave,
and even though they freeze out, enough
will live to fill us until the cold comes on.
I’m learning, certain desires are like that.
Once, he walks out with a hoe
to help with the pigweed and knotgrass,
catches me with a fist of wet loam,
smiles a new star, wraps
his beefy hands around mine. I let him.
Maybe dirt moors us more than water.
GM
I Cannot Save My Vessel
Shrub of purple lilac, heart-shaped leaves,
stone basement caved as an old face —
settler’s homestead where the foxes hide
their den under what was a potato bin.
If I’m quiet, they let me creep through,
watch awhile. The kits like popcorn.
They toss it, tiny white birds
Broken in their small teeth.
They could hear the lake all day.
They could drink from shallows,
chase minnows. The bitch brought
catch from the last of the run.
I was so sure they were a secret,
a thing I could hold
like only a few other things I hold,
a book of codes,
a past.
The pelts showed up
at Wild Market
three weeks after they disappeared.
Barn said some fool at Art’s Bar
told him some other damn fool
had tamed them, they were
that easy to trap.
I heard once the old homestead wives
buried their stillborn babies
under lilac bushes. I want
to crawl into their den,
let it cave in,
let the white birds fly
up into the purple air
with all the secrets.
YZ
The Words which Follow are in Plain Language
Instead, I run away.
Then the cursed wonder of it,
waking up in the sun in the cab —
having gotten stuck on some muck track
and busted the timing chain
in my rust-peppered pickup —
walking five grimy miles
back to the highway,
two more to the local tow,
then the phone,
and through all that limping sunlight,
the crows singing their glee club
chorus about what jerks we all are.
And I look up into the trees
thinking to tell them they are
f***ing correct
when it comes to me —
I still have it, I still have it,
this uncertain life,
this one plain, stained thing
with some small horizon
still splitting it in two.
Just to feel it
I kick some side-road rocks so hard
I break my steel-toes
I turn around, head to the only place
that feels like home.
The Code of Signals
These are what I use for meaning:
distresses between vessels,
ciphered glances over a shot of scotch,
cool curve of his arm in sleep;
how I speak when speech is shaped
by weather, groceries, short distances.
I have learned that love makes words
with storm, water, even fists
and the secrets we keep from the world
turn on themselves, become an alphabet
coded with the currents of our days —
a scum line which, when finally read,
spells out,
oh, what the hell is it? —
Sorrow?
Rare, befuddled joy?