Ryler Dustin’s Trailer Park Psalms
Contemplating Life Along Backroads: a review of Ryler Dustin’s Trailer Park Psalms by Jennings Collins
I love a lot of blue-collar art. I’m often soothed by the relaxed precision of a banjo, the coo of a southern drawl, the small quirks of a hand sewn quilt, and the grainy film-quality of old television shows. For most readers, poetry might not seem to fit in such a list; it’s a language that’s often hard to learn and even harder to master. For me, though, the inherent value of the poem has to do with the fact of its creation. A poem is something made, offering the same relaxed catharsis that I find in these forms.
This comfort is the feeling I get while reading Ryler Dustin’s latest collection of poetry, Trailer Park Psalms, new in 2024 from the University of Pittsburgh Press and the winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Dustin hails from the Pacific Northwest, and his poems follow him from there, to London, Edinburgh, and back home again. He’s the author of the previous collection, Heavy Lead Birdsong (Write Bloody Publishing, 2010), and his poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Gulf Coast, The Slowdown, and Issue 11 of Miracle Monocle.
Reading Trailer Park Psalms might feel like lying back and letting your mind wander, but to use a bumper-sticker cliche, just because Dustin wanders does not mean he is lost. Divided into four acts, the book first explores his childhood, Dustin’s travels, the history of the place he calls home, and what went through his mind as he returned to it.
The collection opens with a prayer, the titular “Trailer Park Psalm,” and here Dustin establishes the themes that drive much of the book. There’s reverence for every second of the day in this psalm, for people lost and the places that still remain. There’s a holiness given to the life’s journey of the townspeople he grew up with, his adventures with school friends, and the foods his grandmother cooked. “my grandma’s hands that worked / our wood stove chimney back to shape… Bless the cedars / we climbed at dusk until our trailer / looked like toys… Bless Dick, eyes emptied by a war / we were too young to know.”
Though not all are described as prayers, many of the poems here contain the same feeling of reverence present in the opening poem. Dustin’s poetry deepens the connection between himself and the world around him, inviting the reader to find meaning in the mundane and reflect on the eccentricities of their past.
A gas line explosion, fueled by pollution that could have contaminated a town’s water supply, becomes a fable of youthful curiosity in “A Secret.”
“How could they know, standing just feet from the creek’s edge,
that the water itself would burn -
sparks blossom on the current into a crest of flame.”
Don’t let my previous descriptions trick you into thinking this book is misguidedly lighthearted. The violence of the past and present is also a running theme in Trailer Park Psalms. The colonial violence that formed the rural West, for example, is a point of focus in several poems, as is the hunger people face when leaving their lives behind. Dustin also probes the horrors of war that men brought back home with them. And though Dustin reserves a great deal of empathy for his father, the strained relationship with the man (and the secrets kept between them) is another recurring element in the book. “Memorial Day” follows a quiet celebration of his father’s time in the armed forces.
“Last Night in London” and “Wood and Wire” take Dustin away from his rural roots, but the poems still demonstrate his sharp eye for the creation of lively images invoking place. Here Dustin recalls his time in Europe and, in particular, the connections he made in England. Though he’s often displaced throughout the collection, Dustin maintains a sense of certainty—even while encountering foreign tongues and customs: “While she painted, I walked in the park / past graffiti that said call your mother / and nodding policemen with red noses, / asking myself why i would hope for a home / in someone slowly falling out of love with me.”
“Song for Voyagers” is a particularly interesting detour from the book’s habitual preoccupations, exploring the work of Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan to design the Voyager Golden Record. Dustin uses the concept of the time capsule and the idea of storytelling as a virtue to create a poem where the optimism of the capsule is contrasted with how we have “grown into something unimaginable.”
One of the most compelling aspects of Trailer Park Psalms is Dustin’s approach to form. Evocative fragments like those found in “Still Life” use a single image to create a rich metaphor, while the lengthy “Homestead” combines different scenes to form a holistic portrait of Rogue River Valley, Oregon. Dustin’s interrogations of the length of a memory, a thought, or a prayer form a larger testimonial that becomes the finished collection.
Trailer Park Psalms is a lovely and eclectic collection that allows the form of the poem to become the record of the past, present, and all of the fixations and preoccupations that accumulate along the way. It’s a made thing, containing the evidence of the work required to bring it into being. You can get your own copy from the University of Pittsburgh Press.