Review of Benediction by Alice Notley (Clara B. Jones)

Alice Notley

Benediction

2015

256 pages

Letter Machine Editions

Tucson, Arizona

$20.00

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones

This month (2015), Yellow Chair Review features poems on the theme, “Popular Culture,” a fitting category for the poems of Alice Notley, a brilliant associate of the New York School of Poetry. David Lehman's book, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (1999, Anchor Books) presents the movement as part of “popular cultural history” whose members (e.g., John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, Notley's first husband, Ted Berrigan) drew creative energy from “the bliss of being alive and young.” According to Lehman, these poets sought authenticity in their lives and speech and were subversives and “non-mainstream.” The New York School extends from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, originally including visual artists, writers, and their admirers whose early members gathered regularly in New York's Cedar Tavern. Lehman proposes that these “playful, irreverent, tradition-shattering” innovators created a “New Aesthetic” that made New York City the “culture capital of the world.”

At age 70, Alice Notley, who has lived in Paris since the 1990s, is considered one of America's foremost poets. She has described her writing this way: “I think I try with my poems to create a beginning space. I always seem to be erasing and starting over, rather than picking up where I left off, even if I wind up taking up the same themes. This is probably one reason that I change form and style so much, out of a desire to find a new beginning, which is always the true beginning.” Notley, who has more than twenty-five books in print, some of which she illustrated, is particularly noted for her “epic poems,” and Benediction, dedicated to her second husband, the late British poet, Douglas Oliver, is a blessing to him in long-form. Divided into two untitled parts, these poems are an homage to common, but, not, arbitrary, speech, intimate “prose essays” that I did not want to stop reading. In the poem, “City of Tingling,” Notley writes, “my hair tangled and hangs down is it is hair real hair, understand? Is hair real hair.” and, in the poem, “Memory,” “it only takes a moment to have been in such a past all along...” Using copious white spaces and repetitions, as well as, diverse forms, Benediction's contents treat feelings as real entities and generate a sense of free-association and improvisation. What makes these poems remarkable, however, is that the language is, nonetheless, controlled and non-random.

Notley and her work deserve to be taken very seriously and will be of particular interest to serious readers interested in experimental poetry by females as well as of particular interest to historians of poetics and aesthetics. Additional information about Notley, including, an informative interview, can be found in Frost EA, Hogue C, Eds, 2006, Innovative Women Poets, University of Iowa Press. Alice Notley has been called “one of America's greatest living poets,” and Benediction will show you why.

Review of The Racial Imaginary Ed. by C. Rankine, B. Loffreda, & M.K. Cap (Clara B. Jones)

The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind Edited by Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, & Max King Cap

Fence Books

http://www.fenceportal.org/

285 pages $19.95 USD

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones*

Who is permitted to write about Race and People of Color? Claudia Rankine is a renowned poet whose popularity seems to increase as her “prosecutorial” formulations multiply. Receiving several prestigious nominations and awards, Rankine is at her best when writing about the Universal or the Transcendent (“Some years there exists a wanting to escape.”), literary configurations that Rankine dismisses in the volume under review. The Introduction to The Racial Imaginary, written with the writer, Beth Loffreda (hereafter, R&L), informs us that Rankine initiated the Racial Imaginary project online with “an open letter about race and the creative imagination” (p 13), soliciting readers' responses. The resulting book presents 28 selected posts, illustrated by strong and timely artwork chosen by the artist Max King Cap.

R&L's Introduction is most emphatic when rejecting “the imagination [as] a free space” (15) and when arguing that “To say, as a white writer, that I have a right to write about whoever I want, including writing from the point of view of characters of color—that I have a right of access and that my artistry is harmed if I am told I cannot do so—is to make a mistake.” (15-16). These themes continually resonate with the reader. The volume is divided into five Sections—Institutions, Lives, Readings, Critiques, and Poetics. Institutions highlights R&L's distinction between Race and Racism, and a wide range of intensely personal, even, confessional, voices describe their experiences, mostly in the form of seemingly cathartic expressions of white guilt, realizing the Editors' prediction that, “[The 'internal tumult' will] be made up of some admixture of shame, guilt, loathing, opportunism, anxiety, irritation, dismissal, self-hatred, pain, hope, affection, and other even less nameable energies.” (21). The entries in the book's first two Sections, and their sometimes discomforting revelations, left me wondering about the power differentials and dynamics between Rankine and most of the other writers. The potential for Rankine's voice to influence, if not intimidate, her subordinates should be considered; although, Rankine might counter that attempts to construct a hierarchy based upon rank, prominence, or authority inherently reflects structural racism, classism, and sexism. Clearly, Rankine intended her Racial Imaginary project to be an egalitarian and communal effort.

The Section, Readings, begins with a well-researched and instructive essay by Joshua Weiner. He has a fundamentally progressive goal, “to disrupt the structure, so that we can see it” (124). Weiner's tools for dismantling power structures are ideas and words, and his cogent analysis of representations of identity in several texts, privileges the universality of the theme, “the individual and society”.

Critique is a brief Section addressing the challenging topic, “writing race”. As a self-described “black woman”, Diane Exavier states, “I feel like race isn't something I always want (or need) to talk about, but it is something that other people won't let me forget.” (205). Importantly, this author proposes a solution: “I truly believe that it is the recognition of the Other that ultimately leads to unification.” (206). However, Exavier does not tell us how to do this. In the same Section, Soraya Membreno's perspectives on race and ethnicity are refreshing and unique in this volume. “I am Hispanic, yes, but that's not your business.” (212). And, later in her essay, “Race does not define me, it is my culture, but it is not me.” (213). Membreno asserts her right to define her own identity, a timely topic given recent debates about Rachel Dolezal's “passing” (also see Lacy M. Johnson;s piece in this section and Tamiko Beyer's essay on page 245).

The Poetics Section includes 15 brief entries on how individual poets engage the topic, “Race” in their practices. I wish this Section had been expanded to include more personal reflections on the process of writing poetry. The book would have benefited from a discerning summary chapter written by R&L with the purpose of placing in perspective similar and different themes and trends across essays, including, a (revised) conceptual framework, particularly, since many of the contributors' views seem incompatible with those of the Editors as proffered in their Introduction. Throughout the volume, this reviewer was annoyed by numerous editorial oversights, and one has the impression that the book was hastily assembled. Nonetheless, The Racial Imaginary is recommended as a genuine attempt to initiate a conversation about Race. The Editors present a variety of viewpoints from a diverse group of contributors.

A particularly evident, though, possibly, useful, consequence of reading each essay is thinking about the inherent inconsistencies of assumptions and intellectual constructs employed by the authors, and it might be worthwhile for scholars to “unpack” the subtexts and deep structures within and between Sections. Indeed, Rankine, herself, may have some ambivalence about her rejection of the Universal and the Transcendent, since the “voice” of her 2014 book, Citizen (Graywolf), employs many generic references and sentences relevant to all humans, especially, marginalized groups other than blacks (“You are you even before you.”; “Why do you feel okay saying this to me?”; As usual, you drive straight through the moment with the expected backing off of what was previously said.”). Furthermore, Rankine is aware that, in a Postmodern world, identity is fractured, though she advances a collective identity and meta-narrative based on Race. Hopefully, Rankine and Loffreda will expand this program and other writers will initiate their own. The project under review makes clear that poets need to talk among themselves about definitions, motivations, craft, and priorities and that poets of color should dialogue about the potential to ignore facts that do not fit particular narratives or metanarratives.

*Not sure if this was published; maybe on amazon.com; i recall not being pleased with it...

Review of Fruta Bomba: Poems by Holly Iglesias (Clara B. Jones)

Fruta Bomba: Poems

Holly Iglesias

higlesia@unca.edu

Making Her Mark Press

(self-published)

Asheville, NC

2015

$6.00

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones*

Holly Iglesias, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, is an accomplished poet and translator (Spanish). She has published several chapbooks and books, and her writing has appeared in Prarie Schooner, Barrow Street, Crab Orchard Review, Massachusetts Review, as well as other venues. The poet has been awarded fellowships from a number of sources, including, the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, and her first book, Souvenirs of a Shrunken World, won the First Book Award from Kore Press in 2008. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a reading by Iglesias, and it was apparent that I was in the presence of a socially-conscious poet whose creative work transcends politics, sociology, and journalism. The lyricism that she achieves is reminiscent of the “deep song” form associated with Federico Garcia Lorca, a poet whose verse introduces Fruta Bomba [tr. papaya or female genitalia].

Fruta Bomba, a revised edition of a 2012 chapbook published by Q Avenue Press, is a historical as well as an artistic document. Each contribution is a prose poem, some exhibiting experimental forms and many in the tradition of Lorca's surrealism, emphasizing events in Cuba and Miami, as well as physical and emotional distances between these two locations. Iglesias' poems of place, time, and space authentically reflect tropical sensuousness—the colors, the passion and soul (Lorca's duende), the exoticism, the mystery, and the potential for violence. Fruta Bomba is not a didactic work; however, it is clearly influenced by historical figures and highlights, in particular, Cuba's liberation from Spain and the death of José Martí; the Spanish Civil War and the death of Lorca; Janet Reno's advocacy of children's rights, particularly, the Elián González case; and, the Cold War. Though Iglesias has clearly renounced the [optimistic] Modernism characteristic of Martí and Lorca, the poems in this chapbook are not depressing or nihilistic. They reflect, rather, an awareness of the complexities and contradictions of the post-World War II political landscape—at personal and social scales.

The poet and editor, Eleanor Wilner, has praised Iglesias' “pitch-perfect ear and keen eye for the voices, vantages, and scraps of the actual”, and most of the poems in the present collection are noteworthy for their metric and imagistic qualities, notwithstanding their prose form. Iglesias' formal skills are, also, evident in her placement of poems relative to one another, and song-like poems stringing words together [“list poems”] serve almost as “white space”, providing relief from difficult, sometimes, disturbing, verses. Even the “Glossary” and “Notes” at the end of the chapbook mimic poems, the former elucidating contrasting effects of the same word, and “Notes” reminding us of the historical and legal backgrounds of the poems.

Several poems (e.g., “Talking Without Italics”; “Llorona”) address change, difference, and the disruption of calm, and “Bicentenario” echoes an earlier epigram in which Martí tells us that he has two fatherlands—Cuba and nighttime. In this poem, babies are excited to see a garbage truck in the morning, but the speaker, apparently, a woman, visits a doctor, physically and mentally ill (“Doctor, my eyes my ears the tremor the buckling walls Big truck!”). Continuing a recurrent theme, the welfare of babies and children, the poem, “Anthem”, expresses concern for children's safety and the preservation of innocence (“teach my children well feed them on my dreams”). In other poems, the vulnerability of children contrasts with the vulnerability of adults bearing the consequences of political unrest and war (“Assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience”) and the instability of reality when things are not what they appear to be (“The goat, a bee, six nuns by the sea.”; “The concept of Miami was correct but got out of hand.”). Other poems represent the tropics as an ethereal experience (“Another afternoon cloudburst and what to do but wait.”; “the same easy pleasure his finger takes when circling the headlight of a Lamborghini as though it were capable of arousal”). Iglesias' work clearly derives from serious consideration of and direct experience with her themes, and the poems resonate with Post-structuralist tones since interpretation is yielded to the reader.

Fruta Bomba offers its audience many pleasures and discoveries and is an excellent example of the high quality of writing to be found in chapbook format. Iglesias' prose, including, experimental, poems do not appear to be contrived but seem to be almost classical conventions appropriate to theme, meaning, and meter. A good example is the poem, “Oremos”, that begins with a religious litany and moves, sensitively and logically, to a statement about inequality and oppression. But, Iglesias cannot be dismissed as a polemical poet. Her craft is always primary. She is not telling her reader what to think or do. This chapbook presents the work of a mature poet who deserves a wider audience and is one of the most compelling collections that I have read in some time. Fruta Bomba is a major achievement recommended to all who love literature, and I look forward to reading Iglesias' future publications.

*Originally published in Rhizomatic Ideas, ~2015

Fjords Review Publishes Special Issue of Writing by African-Americans (Clara B. Jones)

Fjords Review Publishes Special Issue of Writing by African-Americans*

Review of Fjords Special Edition 1, “Black American Edition” (2015) Reviewed by Clara B. Jones

Price: $10.00

Rating: 4 stars (quite good)

Fjords Review (www.fjordsreview.com) is a relatively young, widely available, and sometimes themed literary journal publishing a variety of genres, including, poetry, fiction, translation, reviews, and photography. Its literature is mostly conventional and free-form, though experimental work is considered. The journal, founded and edited by John Gosslee, is published twice yearly in print, with online content changing monthly. Submissions are received by post or online (for a small fee), and decisions are usually reported within 45 days. The editorial staff of Fjords will comment on a submission for $15.00, a useful service often costing significantly more at other venues. My review evaluates the first in a series of special issues titled, “Black American Edition” (“Special Issue 1”), guest edited by Geffrey Davis, a professor at the University of Arkansas and illustrated with drawings by the controversial African-American artist, Kara Walker.

It may not be an exaggeration to say that the contemporary art scene represented by young black creative writers, especially, young black male poets, is undergoing a Renaissance. Ishion Hutchinson, Gregory Pardlo, Terrance Hayes, Saeed Jones, Roger Reeves, and Dante Micheaux come first to mind. Perhaps we are witnessing a renewed emphasis on the black male voice influenced by political events highlighting the vulnerability of the black male body, often the victim as well as the perpetrator of violent crime in the United States. Brit Bennett has recently pointed out in an article in The New Yorker that, statistically, the black female body is at risk, also. However, the frequency, rate, and proportion of violence associated with the black male body in the United States is staggering and, effectively, without comparison.

By choosing to initiate their Special Edition series with a focus on (mostly emerging) African-American writers, Gosslee acknowledges the centrality of Race in the American discourse and the important role black literature and art have to play in the revision of that narrative. In his introduction, Davis, a poet, sees the black creative project as a “counterforce” to “trauma” as the country decides “what must come next for America”. Davis paves the way for a radical critique of structural racism in the United States; however, as noted below, most of the contributions to this Special Edition are not overtly political, concentrating, instead, on personal experience and intimate relations.

Thirty-one writers, mostly poets and mostly female, are represented in Special Edition 1, addressing topics with varying degrees of relevance to Davis' conceptual framework, “trauma”. Contributions examine sexual violence as well as romantic love, anger and hope, resignation and acceptance, suicide and birth, the challenge as well as the promise of assimilation, “lack” and ambition, fracture as well as repair. This reviewer had the impression that, for the most part, there are no revolutionaries among this group of writers; although, some of the contributions are provocative (see, for example, works by Ricardo Cruz, t'ai freedom ford, and Remica L. Bingham-Risher). Diamond Sharp's treatment of mental illness in her noteworthy poem, “Mal de Ojo” (tr. “The Evil Eye”), is a complex statement about History on two scales, the personal and the national. However, Kamilah Aisha Moon's poem, “The Emperor's Deer”, is the only contribution directly addressing structural racism. In Special Edition 1, fear and confusion are more often sources of imagination than anger or politics. Most of the trauma described in “Black American Edition” is of a personal nature, often attributed to pain experienced in intimate relationships (with fathers or partners, in particular).

Several of the poems in Special Edition 1 are excellent by any standards, though the “personal” voice, contrasted with the “abstract” position, is ubiquitous. An exception is the voice of Dante Micheaux, represented by three exquisite poems showing why he is among the most highly regarded of young black poets currently writing in the United States. His “Slaughter of the Geese” takes one's breath away (“With the scrim of green and crimson/leaves lost to winter/the bottom of the garden/was conspicuous/bare....”). Also transcendent is the humanity expressed in Isaac Black's poem, “Visiting Daddy, the War Dead”. Black's effect is heartbreaking, exhibiting, at the same time, pain and the will to transcend it. In Micheaux's and in Black's poems, the universal supports and enhances the particular, as a change in seasons denotes, as well, loss or mortality, themes we can all relate to, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, and the like.

The writers in “Black American Edition” bear witness to trauma but do not address how we can transform the personal or the political, though, based on my online research, some of the represented poets are engaged in community outreach projects. Many of the works in Special Edition 1 suffer from a didactic quality. However, it is important to “hear” each writer's story and to think seriously about the narratives that emerge when writers do not have the privilege of taking History for granted. As such, “Black American Edition”is a document worth having and reading as a scholarly as well as an artistic text, with a particular focus on the concerns of young black writers. Gosslee and his staff have produced a visually appealing and professionally crafted text, though the failure to include contributors' biographies is a serious oversight. Nonetheless, Fjords deserves praise for the high quality of its selections and for its creative vision. I look forward to future issues and Special Editions and will begin to visit the journal's webpage on a regular basis.

*Originally published in The Review Review, 2015

Fragment re: Black Nationalist Poetry (Clara B. Jones)

The new genre, Black Nationalist Poetry may have something in common with Joyce & Yeats [Irish Nationalism]...also, there are a number of similarities w authoritarian movements of 1930s & 40s [e.g., individual subordinate to group; realism]...Black Nationalist Poetry appears to be a backlash to calls for diversity in the Poetry community, led by Morgan Parker and presented in manifesto form in her Harriet: The Blog blogpost abt 1 month ago...she states that the roots of Black Nationalist Poetry can be found in the Poetry of Nikki Giovanni...ummm...how about Cesaire's "negritude?"...or, Black Arts Movement...?...BTW, Black Nationalist Poetry is, for the most part, allied w Modernism [metanarratives (institutional racism; the underclass), essentialism (Binary--black : white); utopianism; heroic (e.g., MLK, Malcolm X; Nikki Giovanni), allegories? (see Rankine)]...Post-modernist & Post-structuralist concepts concerning the primacy of text [Derrida]; construction/performance of race; interpretation being in the hands of the reader/audience; discursive "alliances [Foucault], etc., are, IMO, not emphasized...Black Nationalist Poetry's ties to Modernism may account for its Conservatism [ties to the past/slavery/Africa; ties to myth]...a sense in which Black Nationalist Poetry is DECIDEDLY POSTMODERNIST is the sense in which the poem is NOT autonomous but, rather, is to be interpreted in its Social and Political context...

American Chordata, New Literary and Arts Magazine (Clara B. Jones)

American Chordata, New Literary and Arts Magazine*

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones

Five Stars

Free form poetry, as well as, fiction and artwork emphasizing emotional experience

The current (September/October) issue of Poets & Writers says the new journal, American Chordata (http://americanchordata.org), “is on its way to solidifying an editorial identity with an impressive debut issue”. The magazine, published twice each year (Spring, Autumn), is currently available in hard copy (from booksellers) and is free to download online (PDF). AC is open for submissions year-round, and guidelines are available on their website. The first issue includes three selections of fiction, work by eight poets, and two photographic series, in addition to other visuals. The new magazine's Editor, Ben Yarling, told me (via e-mail) that, “We're founded on the belief that a good literary magazine can celebrate sophisticated design and earnest expression on the same 5.5” x 8.5” page. What interests us most—what we love to read and what we want to share with our readers—is work that's new but not slick or sarcastic, that's brave enough to give us emotional detail and skilled enough to do it without melodrama. Stories and poems (and works of art and photography) that are surprising but not flashy. Unusual but not esoteric. Clear-sighted without being cynical. Cool without being cold. We try to do what we do with a deliberate respect for the plurality of human experience.”

Upon reading AC for the first time, I immediately noticed that the magazine's masthead lists an “Art Director”, Bobby Doherty, and that artwork (photography and painting, in particular) plays a major role in the publication, so much so that I have come to think of AC as a small “coffee-table” publication. I asked Yarling whether he considers AC to be a combined Literature-Art magazine. His response? “Absolutely! One of the most rewarding aspects of putting together this first issue was creating conversations between the writing and the art and photography. Conversations in which both sides carry more-or-less equal weight. We included two photo features in Issue One, and we have a couple already lined up for Issue Two that Bobby Doherty and I are really excited about.”

As Ben's comments suggest, AC is seriously curated, reminiscent of several magazines that I read on a regular basis (TANK, Sleek, Zoo, Interview) characterized by deliberate attention to detail and cross-referencing of themes and images. Like many European publications, AC explores numerous aspects of Human Nature, including, its ambiguous and unconscious dimensions. AC, however, is targeted to the literate American audience but is not self-conscious, elitist, or patronizing, evidence of the editors' concern that their magazine should be accessible to the general reader. In addition to appreciating AC's content, one is immediately impressed by the respect the magazine offers to contributors, a posture evident in Yarling's introductory “Note” and by the placement of contributors' bios directly after the Table of Contents. The magazine's title, also, reflects respect for readers as well as contributors, since the biological category, Chordata, includes many of the most complex, (evolutionarily) recent, and social organisms on Earth (including Humans and other primates). AC continues the tradition of highlighting Literature and Art as fundamental modes of communication.

Diana Xin's short fiction presents a portrait of lovers, neither of whom likes to talk. This (heterosexual) couple is not OK. After an uncomfortable interaction, the sexual act becomes an avoidance mechanism rather than a method to reconcile, and the female character is designed in a stereotyped way—no agency, no identity, no name. These young people simply settle for whatever happens to come along, imputing significance to irrelevant things in order to feel alive. Ultimately, though Xin's minimalist writing is well-crafted, her characters did not sustain my interest, nor did they tell me anything that I wanted to know. The ladder in the center of the couple's studio apartment might be a metaphor for escape or transcendence; but, ultimately, there is no sign of relief or progress. Colby Halloran's short story describes a family obsessed by rules violated by a father's infidelity. Echoing Xin's contribution, Halloran's piece addresses identity fractured and ill-defined and is effectively illustrated by a haunting, unsentimental painting whose markings and reflections are reminiscent of tears. The most expressionistic and, in my opinion, the most effective, piece of fiction is Carianne King's coming-of-age story featuring a vulnerable high-school student with an ineffective and ineffectual mother. A temporary facial injury serves as a metaphor for the girl's unstable self-image, though it is clear that her intelligence and insight may rescue her from a grim present and depressing future. All three stories belong to the American tradition of “grotesque” or “Gothic” fiction (Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Bobbie Ann Mason); however, the strongest examples of this genre raise questions of morality. With the possible exception of King's piece, none of these stories rises to that bar. As Paul Fry (Yale) pointed out, literature doesn't have to reconcile issues, but it should make us better citizens.

The quality of poetry in AC's first issue rises above its fiction. As a poet, I have a few “pet peeves”, a major one being that words or phrases should not seem obvious or expected or formulaic. For the most part, this wasn't a problem; however, Cal Graves' fragment, “Living Forever”, made me think of a Woody Allen joke (“I want to live forever; so far, so good.”). Distracting. Many contemporary poems considered publication-worthy begin with an imagistic or a concrete phrase or sentence leading into an experiential space or interlude like daydreaming or feelings/emotions or “ostensive moments” (Paul Fry). CA's selections are no exception, and D. Eric Parkinson's poems are excellent examples of this form (“You've seen the boy on the bus/Whose brothers beat him?/.../Think, though, of a bee-less world;/In breathtaking, useless rows.”). The poem, “Saccades”, by Emma Furman attaches words to feelings with an effect of hallucination (“There is no happy childhood. You just grow away.”), and Sarah V. Schweig's poem, “Stories (II)”, interestingly, produces a type of visual-auditory enjambment (“It is your last night on Earth. I am unaware./.../It is your last night, I am unaware, and have nothing to tell her./.../Tell me..../”). Soren Bliefnick's poetry is very strong. His prose poem, “Curio Storage”, “unspools” (Helen Vendler's referent) like a prayer or supplication ending, seemingly, inevitably, with the phrase, “time resumed”, as if what came before was an interlude of dreaming, a distortion of reality pulling back on itself, becoming whole (“I am the absolver of gooseflesh, I knew.”).

The expertly-chosen artwork unifies the issue by continual cross-referencing and interweaving of images, characters, events, and themes throughout text and artwork. Thus, yellow, green, and red are iterated. Images occur recursively [balloons, horses, plants, space (NASA, astronauts, atmosphere, altitude) and themes are repurposed—impermanence, phallic symbols (ice-cream cone, ladder, charred trees, tears), hands, social insects, sand...many more]. As anyone who has assembled a coherent project will understand, such curation takes a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and a lot of work. AC is, in my experience, a virtually unique publication, indeed, a carefully- and beautifully-crafted product. When I encountered Talena Sanders' remarkable series of photographs titled, “Body Memory”, it occurred to me that the magazine would, not only, make a “coffee-table” volume for pleasurable perusal, but could, also, become a source of games whereby players might compete to identify the largest number of repeated references or themes or list the most interpretations for a given work of art or poem or story. My five-star rating of American Chordata is a measure of its impeccable production and of my enthusiasm to have it receive the largest possible audience.

*Originally published in The Review Review, 2016

Online Journal Publishes Special Issue On Adrienne Rich (Clara B. Jones)

Online Journal Publishes Special Issue On Adrienne Rich*

Review of The Critical Flame: A Journal of Literature and Culture, 23 March 2015 by Clara B. Jones

Rating: 3 stars

Keywords: Literary and Critical Essays

According to the webpage of the progressive, online venue, The Critical Flame: A Journal of Literature and Culture, its Mission is “to encourage intelligent public discussion about literature and culture through long-form literary and critical essays covering a wide range of topics”. Surfing the site, essays group into three categories: Verse, Fiction, and Non-fiction with contributions on subjects as varied as Vivian Gornick's new memoir, Nicola Griffith's recent novel on female identity in art, and Mark Doty's 2014 poetry collection, Deep Lane. Most of the essays I skimmed were fewer than twelve paragraphs long, written in a style reminiscent of short academic articles but without formal notation or distractingly technical language.

The journal's webpage informs us that “between May 2014 and April 2015, Critical Flame dedicated its pages to women writers and writers of color”, and one project was the Special Issue, “The enduring power of Adrienne Rich”, a feminist and political poet who died in 2012 at the age of 82. In her 1983 book, Writing Like A Woman, the feminist poetry critic, Alicia Ostriker, said, “Rich is the strongest woman poet in the country, and a major influence.” Many readers of this review will be familiar with Rich's work, particularly, the volumes, The Will To Change (1971) and Diving Into The Wreck (1973), and her first book, A Change Of World (1951), was awarded the Yale Younger Poets' Award by W.H. Auden.

This Special Issue includes an Introduction by the journal's Founding Editor, Daniel E. Pritchard, one interview, seven essays and one contribution presenting brief personal testimonies by six female poets on the “lasting influence of Adrienne Rich”. I strongly identified with these unevenly-written pieces because, in the 1970's, Rich's poetry, and the writing of Francoise Giroud, changed the direction of my life. Three of the seven essays are contributed by men, and, two of these address technical aspects of Rich's poems (syntax and word placement) in a relatively detached manner while the third essay by a man (discussed below) is the most conventionally academic in the issue. I highlight this point because, except for the Introduction, the content of texts is, on balance, gendered in the sense that female contributors write in a personal, intimate voice. The reader is encouraged to see Ostriker's book, Stealing The Language (1986), for a detailed treatment of differences between male and female writing.

“The enduring power of Adrienne Rich” includes a 2001 translation of an interview between Rich and the Chilean poet, Magdalena Edwards, recorded during a conference, Chile Poesia, in Santiago. The interview is accompanied by an 8 minute video (in color), and both documents will serve scholars and other interested readers with archival evidence of Rich's knowledge of and commitment to political initiatives designed to highlight and to combat oppression. Ostriker (Writing Like A Woman) considers Rich “a poet of ideas” whose poems and prose “depend on the assumption that the writer's mind exists to embody the implicit meaning of a culture at a moment in time”, a narrative privileging social conditions. Indeed, by the early 1970s, when the formerly-married mother of three sons announced her homosexuality, her themes addressed self-revelation, feminism, love between females, war, patriarchy, anger, and capitalism. Some, like the poetry critic, Helen Vendler, consider Rich's work after 1973 to be, primarily, “Sociology” and “Politics”; however, even Vendler, a classicist who considers gender (and race) to be secondary to “temperament”, has demonstrated a consistent interest in the compelling nature of Rich's writing and themes. One of the characteristic themes of Rich's work is sexuality, discussed at length and not without criticism by Ostriker (Writing Like A Woman). Notwithstanding, at one point in the interview, Rich asks, “What about desire? How dangerous could it be?”, remarkable queries of import for all inquisitive readers, especially, perhaps, women.

Anne Charles, the only contributor who identifies as lesbian, acknowledges the effect of Rich's “vision” , especially, the impact of “lies, secrets, and silence” (see Rich's book of prose, 1979, of the same name). Other essays address education, social change, location, and the politics of motherhood, and some critics might classify Rich as a writer in the “politically Queer” tradition (see Maggie Nelson's 2015 book, The Argonauts) which has an uncomfortable relationship to maternity. Indeed, Rich's early writing often concerned the stresses associated with motherhood and other aspects of family life. Rich is, also, discussed as a “poet of dissent”, and in Writing Like A Woman, Ostriker points out that Rich writes about many types of “burning” (e.g., books, men, children, slavery, sexual loneliness).

In my opinion, the strongest essay is authored by Joshua Jacobs who proposes that we compare Rich's poetry with that of Claudia Rankine (see, Citizen: An American Lyric, 2014). Jacobs seems, particularly, impressed with the idea that both poets are “witnesses to social injustice”, women and blacks, respectively. A strong case can be made for Jacobs' perspective, and he has identified a new dimension of research on women's literature; although, it seems to me that Rich had a global, in addition to a local, perspective on violence and oppression, while one still searches for these connections and influences in Rankine's writing. I think that the most fundamental similarity between Rich and Rankine is their treatment of language, such that, Rich states, “This is the oppressor's language yet I need it to talk to you.” (Poems: Selected And New, 1975), while, similarly, Rankine says, “Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word.” (Citizen). A final observation that may be important when comparing these female poets is that both would probably be considered conventional (“normative”) by current Queer Theorists (e.g., Judith Butler, Lee Edelman), making Jacobs' project even more significant to scholars and intellectuals. One hopes that Jacobs will expand his proposals, providing a template for other critics.

Although this Critical Flame Special Issue is an innovative and welcome initiative, two omissions cannot be overlooked and limit its utility. First, Rich's lesbianism, fundamental to her identity, “temperament”, politics, and writing, is, for all purposes, not mentioned in the contributions, including, Charles'. Even if this “lack” resulted because of prurience, it is unfortunate, at best, and the Editor might have added an essay to explore this aspect of Rich's personhood. Second, Rich's partner, the scholar, Michelle Cliff (now 68), is not mentioned in any of the issue's texts (including the interview and video). Rich and Cliff were a couple from 1976 until Rich's death and influenced each others' work. Cliff deserves the same acknowledgment as a spouse or significant colleague of other major figures would receive. In a 2010 interview with Julie R. Enszer on the Lambda Literary Blog, Cliff, a woman of color and a highly-trained Italian scholar who has been characterized as a practitioner of “resistance literature”, reported that she is working on a manuscript about the 18^th Century Astronomer, Caroline Herschel. This project is, without question, a “love-symbol” (a phrase from one of Cliff's poems) to Rich whose famous poem, “Planetarium” (The Will To Change), is dedicated to Herschel. As a sign of Rich's devotion to Cliff, the reader is referred to Rich's poem, “The Spirit Of Place” (A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, 1981). Despite my reservations, “The enduring power of Adrienne Rich” is recommended to readers as an important tribute to, as many critics would conclude, the premier female poet of her generation in America.

*Originally published in The Review Review, 2015