Orenoque, Wetumka is a recent book of poems by Robert Bensen. His current residence at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, as Professor of English and Director of Writing, obscures his local origins and local importance to our world of poetry. This wonderful collection of poems blends the borderlands of the Native American and European American experiences with a lyrical density that makes second and third reads very rewarding.
Robert Bensen was born in Joliet, Illinois, and, after an Associates Degree from Joliet Junior College, he attended the University of Illinois, finishing with a BA, MA, and, finally, a PhD in 1974. Despite a dissertation subject of Paradise Lost, a masterpiece that would intimidate the average lover of good verse, Bob wanted to bring poetry and its creation to the people who simply loved it. With that in mind, he founded the Red Herring Poets at Channing-Murray Foundation in 1975 — an organization that still flourishes. He was founder and first editor of “Matrix,” a local publication that helped the early years of such local writers as Elizabeth Klein.
After three years at Parkland (1976–78), he moved on to Hartwick College’s Department of English where he would continue to mentor young writers up to the present. He has published four books of poetry and edited two others. His work in recent years has examined native cultures and their interaction with the imported worlds from other hemispheres. In Orenoque, Wetumka, Professor Bensen beautifully mixes his poetic sense of place with a powerful appreciation of the survival instinct of native cultures.
Perhaps the truly marvelous element in Bensen’s poems is the power of his metaphors. They are not for beginners or lovers of light verse. They are complex, deep, and beautifully lyrical. But, beyond the marvelous and often magical metaphors are that sense of place.
Consider this extraordinary description of an all-night cafe in Guiana:
After an a red-eye flight to Cuidad Bolivar, we had three hours to kill in the El Dorado cafeteria. All the gold-veined Formica could have been from Iowa, except the shop sold blowguns———–
Even without completing that section, you have a mental painting worthy of an Edward Hopper canvas.
Using images from history, geography, and cultural identity that Bensen takes to places, people and other worlds come to life. Through the magic of his sense of place and majestic metaphors, we experience people and places we thought we knew with new light. His often-complex imagery makes the discovery of these special places and people all the richer.
Orenoque, Wetumka is published by Bright Hill Press of Treadwell, New York.