Laressa Dickey’s second chapbook, Companions, Corps of Discovery asks the tacit question Who travels with you? In the memory and imagination of Dickey’s speaker, Amelia Earhart traverses the globe, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic. Earhart as a figure represents the possibility for women to roam and migrate in a history dominated by male explorers. The obscurity of Earhart’s fate makes her a model for migration without a Manifest Destiny, movement through spaces that does not need to colonize or assimilate them.
Kathleen Jesme calls Dickey’s poems “poignantly beautiful”, and we agree. Their beauty comes from their desire and their courage: with Dickey, we go where she goes, quietly but studiously making note of where we are, both inside and out. We employ modes of transit that are dreamlike and intangible. We are able to believe “a song was boarding”.