Sign Inventory, Week 14

"The Place Above the River" by Kate Northrop

The house is empty and girls go in.
They drift through hours in the summer.
Across the river, music begins:

Love, it's summer. The closed homes open.
The docks are decked with lights. But further
the house is empty and girls go in

to light their lovely cigarettes; they listen
closely to the woods. Leaves? A slowing car?
Across the river, music begins

where wives are beautiful still, and thin
(in closets their dresses hang, sheer as scarves)
while the house is empty and the girls go in,

shimmering, to swallow vodka, or gin,
which burn, and to lean from where the window were.
Across the river, music begins

and will part waves of air. Now. Then.
The season's criminal, strict and clear.
The house is empty. Girls go in.
Across the river, music begins.

Sign Inventory:

• This poem is structred in the form of a villanelle (19 lines): consisting of five tercets and one quatrain.  The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close.
• This piece fits in with the overall collection in that it also adheres to the writer's stylistic preference of lyrical ballads.
• I find it interesting that the name of the title is 'The Place "Above" the River'; contrastingly in the refrain throughout the piece the writer instead uses "Across the river". This seems like a rather queer particular that is so subtly, it almost goes unremarked, unnoticed.
• There are only two, rather odd and (almost) out of place, short clips within the piece formmated in italics: "Love, it's summer." (4), and "Now. Then. (16)"; these snippets, small (of course), seem to suggest a much grander purpose, and thus, their tiny essance in the poem creates tension and difficulty; their presence residing as a sort of crux. 
• Also, I find this piece intriguing because the writer only incorporates/mentions the female sex within her piece. What's more, Northrop begins the poem with 'girls', then in the middle of the piece--line 10--she switches to 'wives'; I believe this tiny inclusion is a challenging phenomenon in itself.
• The poem appears to end without any since of resolution or clear understaning of possibilites for further interpretation... Unless perhaps that this place, these 'girls' and 'wives', and their relationship with "the place above the river" and "across the river" is congruous with the cyclical and recursive nature of the villanelle: a recurrent, repetitive pattern in form, structure, and representation. It's quite a fascinating and stimulating speculation.