xterminal's review
4.0
Victoria Redel, Already the World (Kent State University Press, 1998)
In general, I approach poetry books in one of two ways; I either read two or three poems here and there and then go off and read something else or I devour them in a couple of sittings. There's no judgment to be made about the quality of a book based on how I approach it; some books are so good I want to draw them out, while some are compelling in a way that makes me want to get through them as fast as I can. On the other hand, some are just chores, and some I want to get through as fast as possible just to have done with them. Novels are an entirely different experience; I usually start them in dribs and drabs (even some by my favorite authors; Robin Hobb's books, for example, always start like this with me), and then at some point the book just grabs me and I end up inhaling it over the next day or so. Already the World is the first poetry book I can remember that I read like a novel; for the first ten or fifteen pages, I did the two-or-three-at-a-time thing, then about halfway through the first section, it grabbed me, and I finished the rest of the book last night and this morning. It's not that the first part was bad, not at all. The whole book is immensely enjoyable. There is, however, a novel-like progression in the way these poems are presented; the first bit gives us a footloose and fancy free youth, the second shows our protagonist (who may or may not be Redel; never assume with first-person poetry unless you know the person) growing up, and the third gives us a young mother adjusting to life as someone for whom another person is all-consuming in a way that casual lovers and roommates could never be. I'm not one to pass judgment on anyone's chosen lifestyle. At least, I try not to be, Redel's protagonist, though, seems to get much more at home in her skin as the book progresses. Conventional, sure, but who can argue with it? Especially when the transformation is presented as convincingly as it is here.
Sometimes, though, it's the extraneous that really hits home. In his blurb for the book, Gerald Stern, who judged the first Wick First Book contest (of which this was the winner), singles out the poem “Food”, which has not much to do with anything, really, except that it's a fantastic piece of work. Stern comments that “Food” “...has to be one of the most passionate, chilling, tender poems of the decade.” I don't know about all that—lord knows no single person can read all the tens of thousands of poems produced over the course of any ten-year span—but there's no denying its power.
“With the rabbit hung to be bled, he sits back
to wet the skinning blade. The rabbits seem jittery.
He thinks how he has watched their twitchy sleep, and how
he has opened a rabbit, held the testicles in his palm before
dropping them in the bucket, how he has pinched
and then pulled back their skin, yanking and
yanking until he wonders if this time
it is his own skin that will go, and how he has bled
the necks, catching the first blood to save for cooking....”
(I'm ignoring for convenience's sake my assumption that “wet” should actually be “whet”, since I don't know a blessed thing about skinning rabbits, and maybe one does need a wet blade.) What makes a piece of writing poetry, to me, is a poet's ability to take the natural language we use daily and somehow elevate it, take it into some sort of rarefied air where we can still see the words we use every day, but where we can also see that the poet has somehow imbued those words with a power one doesn't get from prose. Redel makes connections, draws conclusions, and they all seem logical, but they're not connections we'd necessarily think about in a more prosaic head space. One way or other other, it all works, and it works very well. This is a good one. Get it. ****
In general, I approach poetry books in one of two ways; I either read two or three poems here and there and then go off and read something else or I devour them in a couple of sittings. There's no judgment to be made about the quality of a book based on how I approach it; some books are so good I want to draw them out, while some are compelling in a way that makes me want to get through them as fast as I can. On the other hand, some are just chores, and some I want to get through as fast as possible just to have done with them. Novels are an entirely different experience; I usually start them in dribs and drabs (even some by my favorite authors; Robin Hobb's books, for example, always start like this with me), and then at some point the book just grabs me and I end up inhaling it over the next day or so. Already the World is the first poetry book I can remember that I read like a novel; for the first ten or fifteen pages, I did the two-or-three-at-a-time thing, then about halfway through the first section, it grabbed me, and I finished the rest of the book last night and this morning. It's not that the first part was bad, not at all. The whole book is immensely enjoyable. There is, however, a novel-like progression in the way these poems are presented; the first bit gives us a footloose and fancy free youth, the second shows our protagonist (who may or may not be Redel; never assume with first-person poetry unless you know the person) growing up, and the third gives us a young mother adjusting to life as someone for whom another person is all-consuming in a way that casual lovers and roommates could never be. I'm not one to pass judgment on anyone's chosen lifestyle. At least, I try not to be, Redel's protagonist, though, seems to get much more at home in her skin as the book progresses. Conventional, sure, but who can argue with it? Especially when the transformation is presented as convincingly as it is here.
Sometimes, though, it's the extraneous that really hits home. In his blurb for the book, Gerald Stern, who judged the first Wick First Book contest (of which this was the winner), singles out the poem “Food”, which has not much to do with anything, really, except that it's a fantastic piece of work. Stern comments that “Food” “...has to be one of the most passionate, chilling, tender poems of the decade.” I don't know about all that—lord knows no single person can read all the tens of thousands of poems produced over the course of any ten-year span—but there's no denying its power.
“With the rabbit hung to be bled, he sits back
to wet the skinning blade. The rabbits seem jittery.
He thinks how he has watched their twitchy sleep, and how
he has opened a rabbit, held the testicles in his palm before
dropping them in the bucket, how he has pinched
and then pulled back their skin, yanking and
yanking until he wonders if this time
it is his own skin that will go, and how he has bled
the necks, catching the first blood to save for cooking....”
(I'm ignoring for convenience's sake my assumption that “wet” should actually be “whet”, since I don't know a blessed thing about skinning rabbits, and maybe one does need a wet blade.) What makes a piece of writing poetry, to me, is a poet's ability to take the natural language we use daily and somehow elevate it, take it into some sort of rarefied air where we can still see the words we use every day, but where we can also see that the poet has somehow imbued those words with a power one doesn't get from prose. Redel makes connections, draws conclusions, and they all seem logical, but they're not connections we'd necessarily think about in a more prosaic head space. One way or other other, it all works, and it works very well. This is a good one. Get it. ****
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