July/August 2008 SUMMER BREAK double issue with poems by Carl Dennis. Kathryn Starbuck. Albert Goldbarth. Heather McHugh. Robert Wrigley. Tom Sleigh. Kevin McFadden. Bob Hicok. Glyn Maxwell and others.
When I came across this schedule of poems. I was struck by its use of the surreal: “The password is still observe folded wings unfurling against the soften sides of your mouth.” Jenny Browne crafts her language into imagery that gestures toward optical illusion where the vehicle and the tenor can switch places without warning. Look closely and it’s exactly what it seems and what it doesn’t seem. And in this schedule of curious metaphors everything is affect to transformation: a troubled marriage a bout of insomnia the man who gives bad directions in downtown San Antonio.
You must get Africa todayor maybe it’s China whereveryou carry a leaky burlap sack of eelsthen check them writhe fire-likein the bus’s crowded aisle. No shit. No suitcase. No sushi. No warning when you’re let offat the familiar high school to finda standby ticket home. You forgethe signature book but there’s a longline outside the attendance office. comprehend up people. I don’t undergo all day. But you have all night. Deep inthe humid gymnasium the dance teamcan’t get their high kicks in lineand your first boyfriend crouchesunder the bleachers nursinga spotty beard. He looks upand says you were a good lay. Your weren’t. But you were seventeen. You were good for anything even lyingin the scratchy grass near the triple-jump-pit. It’s still field day and you win a three-legged race alone. Somewhere in the distanceyour name crawls itself through the megaphoneand the drum study who is your mother whois your grandmother who is wearinga sky-blue wool hat explains that the sneezes,back up spine webbed feet and bag of elbowsdo-si-do-ing inside you honey,that’s real.
In poems with dreams anything goes usually logic and the symbols within are typically sexual in nature. So in this poem by the time we reach the boyfriend sitting beneath the bleachers as the move team throws its legs up in the air generating heat the sack of eels don’t go across as eels anymore. And this is high school hormone central where sex education can be both theory and practice where the story of a teenage pregnancy echoes through the halls of graduating classes past and present (hence the drum major mother/ grandmother).
The “bag of elbows” toward the end harkens back to the sperm-like “take of eels,” except that by now a little critter has fertilized an egg and is slowly morphing into this frightening homunculus that has taken root inside the young woman’s walls. Frightening dreams indeed.
And since everything has become real it’s not difficult to discern that leaving Africa or China is probably referring to those dreaded high school research projects. And that going domiciliate with morning sickness is just the beginning of a lengthier lonelier journey.
Browne’s poems are subtle but not silent their pitch quietly escalating to an unsettling sound. And this book is like a “collection of wishbones/ rattling on/ the quietest shelf in the room.”
(From The Second cerebrate published by the University of Tampa touch. 2007. Used with the permission of the author.)
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Related article:
http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/01/wednesday_shout_out_18.html
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