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The
Prose Poem is Alive and Well!
The Scented Fox, Laynie
Browne (114pp, $ 14, Wave Books)
Inventory, Linda Black (102pp, £8.95/$15. Shearsman
Books)
Saga/Circus, Lyn Hejinian (150pp, $15.95. Omnidawn)
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Here are three books
which confirm the prose poem is alive and well, even if you won't find many
prose poems in your local Waterstone's.
I must confess that I initially found The Scented Fox hard to review. Usually when I am sent a
book, I read through it slowly over a few days, let it soak in, and then go
back and make notes in pencil next to the poems themselves. However, with
Laynie Browne's poems I
found myself going into a trance each time I returned to them. I was lost and
wandering in a kind of alternative universe, in a way I associate with the
work of, say, Rosmarie Waldrop.
The Scented Fox is made
up of a series of prose poems (and a few lineated poems, too) which combine a
fragmented, fairy-tale language with more abstract, conceptual phrasings. The
effect is immediately both puzzling and beautiful, enticing you in again and
again. Let me quote a few lines to show what I mean:
So we speak
of penetration as towers, a blue building withered in snow.
(From
'Letter III')
She was
confused when he asked if she would prefer to pass the night
in the
forest, or to pass through the forest at night, or to pass the
forest
entirely. Her dress of white silk embroidered in gold had caught
along the
scenery. Her boots of blue satin appeared muddy. Must the
forest be a
part of the sentence she asked. Of course it must, he
answered,
since no one has entered the tale except those who enter
everywhere.
(From 'The
Forest at Night')
The spiders
seem absent leaving only these webs and working quickly.
I did not
mean to startle this arrangement.
(From
'Letter V'.)
Browne uses certain archetypal motifs, such as 'the travelling crystal', to
weave a harmony between her broken narratives. She is not afraid to take
risks and use archaic language when it suits her purposes, almost as if she
wishes to bind her readers in an ancient spell. She continually punctures our
expectations, yet is able to take us with her every time. I would highly
recommend this book to anyone interested in how language can be both disturbing and beautiful
at the same time.
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Linda Black's prose
poems are far more rooted in contemporary, everyday reality. One can see this
with a glance at the titles: 'Advice to Lodgers', 'There's a telephone
(667478)', 'House Mite', 'Hints and Tips', 'Door', and so on. It is the
so-called ordinary, familiar objects which show us what our lives and our
relationships are really all about. Black examines these with a deadpan
humour, and in a language which can be all the more moving because of its
coolness and concision. Black has the ability to summon up a relationship in
just a few words, for example in the prose poem 'Nothing Discarded':
Not a broken
iron, a dried up paint pot. Socks and pants ironed. Each piece of clothing
neatly folded in a plastic bag. Boxes and boxes of her unworn shoes I gave
away.
I'm trying hard to wear my new boots.
At the same time there is a celebratory quality in her attention to small
things, as if it is these alone which can reveal to us the true meaning of
our lives. Here is a prose poem to a 'House Mite':
All the usual accompaniments; tinkling bell, voluminous ears... my clothes are
specially made (I know a little mouse). I have my favourite places - the
rhubarb patch, the folds of a handkerchief. Your house is my palace. Wherever
you go so do I. I dodge and follow. I climb sash cords; unpick hems, mix salt
and sugar. I pray for you.
The book's sections are interspersed with Black's own superb drawings, which
humorously and horrifyingly combine the domestic with the nightmarish - a
sort of Goya let loose on a family in suburbia. They reinforce the idea that
there are lots of other, chaotic lives we lead alongside the tidy one we try
to present to the world. The
ordinary can quickly be turned upside down, your 'mother locked in a jar of
ginger', your father remembered with 'six fingers, a hooked nose and one eye
[...] a dewdrop and a pack of Woodbines.'
Inventory is Linda
Black's first full-length collection - a talent to watch out for!
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Lyn Hejinian's book
of prose and lineated poems is in a sense more purely conceptual. It is
actually two books in one. Circus is a kind of novel or anti-novel and can be both thought-provoking
and witty:
We are
sentimental because we have a sense of time, Quindlan says,
we have a
sense of time because we only take in so much of the
world, we
attend and withdraw, attend and withdraw, and that
withdrawing
is the tick we hear, the shutter clicking [...] rank
sentimentality!
'Chapter 1', 'Chapter 2' and 'Chapter 3' are repeated in endless
combinations, as if the story has to keep beginning again. And there are
other chapters such as 'Chapter Around', 'Chapter Aside' and 'Chapter to
See'.
I have to admit that I had problems staying with this. After a few pages, it
all started to feel a little hollow and one-dimensional, however brilliant it
is in patches. In a quotation on the back, Circus is compared to the work of Gertrude Stein,
but for me, in this book at any rate, Hejinian simply does not have the ear
of Stein.
The second book, Saga, is
a poem sequence which uses a journey by sea as a metaphor for life, love,
literature, all those things which remain important to us. Here, instead of
the prose poem, Hejinian uses lines of varying lengths which both urge us
forward and interrupt us at the same time. Hejinian has that capacity to
convey an idea and in the same breath move us with her lyricism:
[...] I remember
Patches of my
own adolescence as I catch glimpses
Of patches of
turbulence the wind is picking up, tearing
At the
surface of the sea
But in those
days my imagination drew thick forests
Into which I
would dash
Into a secret
future
Between
trees, walking the forest floor on the outer edges of my feet -
Silent,
invisible, an infinite process of disappearing.
In many ways, this book looks back to the Romantic poets. It doesn't always
work for me. At times, abstract nouns are piled up and Hejinian slips into
the overly-prosaic (at least when compared to the high moments in the poem):
[...] A glance into the distance
Raises these
doubts and I take shyness, pity, suspense
And pride as
signs of aesthetic well-being
For which I
can't account, the sea absorbs
Our
inexplicable feelings.
Nevertheless, Hejinian's voice remains a vital one in contemporary poetry.
© Ian Seed 2009
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