As I describe in my goodreads review of Prikryl’s book, Midwood (Norton, 2022), the poems have this remarkably swift practice of establishing their primary concern, or their narrative setting. For instance, in her poem, “Field Trip,” she quickly positions the awkward and slightly alienating position a parent has on a field trip with her child,. How it feels a bit foreign, but also has this sense of social belonging. At its heart, I read “Field Trip” as a lyrical narrative poem leading the reader to a very set and reflective conclusion.
“New Apartments” distinguishes itself from other poems in the book because it’s more explicitly political. Or, for my reading, the final image presents the speaker in a precariously political light. There is a hill where low-income apartments have been built, and people in the village are having to acknowledge “the poor living among us now.” How to account for these “tidy boxlike houses” and their conspicuous presence?
What is the politics of a situation like this? I think the poem endeavors to run the poet’s contradictory thoughts alongside one another using an image. The cold winter. The “pathways coated in a thickness of ice,” so that even as she looked at that path’s gravel, she would likely not have a sure footing herself. And it’s in that position that she can see each pebble “entirely as it was.” Presumably (using some analogous logic in the poem) how she now sees each low-income apartment as it is.