Responses to Zirconia

While Cole Swensen and Arielle Greenberg approach Zirconia from seemingly different angles both, though Swensen seems more guarded in her praise, both are struck by Chelsea Minnis' inventive poetic work.

Swensen remarks on Minnis' form from the start giving her "'hyper' ellipsis" a "hypnotic quality," one which leads to suspense. Yet as Swensen moves on to her description of Minnis' work as a response to violence against women in today's culture, her reading notes a sort of emotionless nature. This point can find secure footing, as she describes Minnis' "veiled ferocity." Minnis is putting these jarring images of rape, "...I desire to be pushed or shoved down...in a grassy area," out in the open to elicit a response. While there is much truth to this Swensen takes this dialogue of "emotionless fact" and expands it to call Minnis' work innocent. Is her innocence not self-mocking? Is she being emotionless when she wants her dress to be "shucked off" as in the poem "Uh"? How is not sardonic? As Swensen works cumbersomely with fact to detail "Primrose" as "the poem of [Minnis'] mother's rape," she seems to describe what I believed one of Minnis' loudest and jarring poems as containing, "such calm intimacy in this tone and very little anger, moving in a dream of emotionless fact."

Even Swensen's last point seems unstable, that Minnis refuses moral judgments and makes the reader, and Minnis, seek them out. This point certainly could find grounding, in the fact that overbearing moral agenda can overbear the art form, yet Minnis' powerful tone and the response to violence which Cole herself points out makes such an argument weak. I would love to embrace Minnis' potential "courage to accept the raw," yet Swensen's idea of Minnis' emotionless work seems unfounded to me.

Moving away from Swensen's piece, Greenfield acknowledges the more rich and vibrant language from which Minnis' seems to more poignantly garner her strength. Instead of jumping right to Minnis' form, Greenfield dives into a description of the "gurlesque," one which seems to move closer to an understanding of Minnis' work. Greenfield states that Minnis' utilization of the "gurlesque" aesthetic is the, "feminist incorporating of the grotesque and cruel with the spangled and dreamy." Thus in Greenfield's argument she describes Minnis' poem "Sectional" as "an iron glove cast in velvet." This description seemed to better pinpoint and acknowledge the presence of Minnis' power. Therefore as we, like Greenfield, look at the "hyper ellipsis" as, "glittering currents of lines" this gives Minnis more power to overcome the violence and "rape fairy tales" that both Swensen and Greenfield acknowledge.

Greenfield's review seemed to capture more of Minnis' voice, its power from all things "gurly," and sardonic strength which begs the reader to respond to violence.

A-Live

context is futile

The Flammable Connective Strength of Zirconium

Upon reading Chelsea Zinnis’ Zirconia one must pinch themselves and ask, did she really just do that? Or maybe rub their eyes a few times just to make sure. Yet above the aesthetic richness the surface of Minnis’ poems provides she creates a strong, connected, conscious web which reverberates through her poems while never mired in confession.

From the minute one looks at Zinnis’ work, the form is remarkable. She weaves together images and emotion using threads of periods, perhaps gems but containing greater strength, which bind her imagery together, building up fantastic description. As in “Shockwave,”

......................................................struck by translucent lightning.....................

.............................................................................................................or...........

...................kneeling in milk near frayed wire...................................................

.....................................................................................an icing white force.......

..............bursts from your brow..........................................................................

From this explosion she can go forth to blast right through “the beard of an old man,” or “a glass candy dish of semen.” In this connected manner, in which Minnis’ work seems to resemble Stephen Burt’s idea of the elliptical, her poems foster an attachment and a web-like strength which reverberates through the pain she details. Perhaps her poem, “Primrose,” best shows this undaunted beautiful strength. Here she takes the fairly confessional “when my mother/was raped/a harpsichord began to play...there was blood in the courtyard,” and breaks free with “as I beat gentleman rapists/with bronze statuettes/so that the blood...oozes down their handsome sideburns.” Thus she does not leave her poetry hinged on pathos, but instead uses it to attack the “gentleman rapists,” with “corsages and corsages of gunshot.”

In this way Minnis’ work falls into Arielle Greenberg’s theory of the “gurlesque.” Minnis conveys both tenderness and toughness while crafting a glimmering world of beauty. Greenberg also talks of the frank attitude towards sexuality present in the gurlesque. Here Minnis’ “Uh” embodies this notion, “Uh...I want to wear hot pants.../and rest my boot on the back of a man’s neck.” Here Minnis’ mockery allows her to keep her metallic strong exterior.

Even Minnis’ title works itself into this dialogue in somewhat meta-poetic and self-conscious ways. The word “zirconia” is derived from an element in the periodic table, which resists very strongly to corrosion and is highly volatile and flammable. It is also quite metallic and shiny, giving it great aesthetic appeal. In addition, Minnis adds a nice touch to this word, changing its “ium” ending to the feminine “ia.” This correlation between the title and Minnis’ work makes itself quite apparent. The fiery, shimmery, powerful nature of Chelsea Minnis’ work despite its plunge into the dark recesses of exploitation and degradation weaves itself into a web of human emotion with an omnipresent connected sense of fantastic vitality.

Questions for EB

As Approaching Ice seemed to incorporate the feeling of experience, how do you see experience in its relation to poetry as a whole?

How do you see the constant reference to source material as a development of human identity or self?

In some of your poems such as "Matthew Henson" and "Against Solitude" you seem to almost embody the characters and write from their perspective, how does this relate or complicate contemporary postmodern issues and methods of narration?

I enjoyed your remark in the Persea interview to the strange nature of humanity, how do you see this idea in Approaching Ice?

Further Thoughts on Bradfield

While looking at Bradfield's own explanation of her work provides reiteration of ideas well documented in Approaching Ice, her own ideas of the weirdness and, I might argue, the fluctuating motion of identity. In her interview with Persea she makes the point that, "the poems are a conversation between fact and interpretation." This statement goes a long way to describe the nature of Ice, constantly blending source material with personal reflection.

In this way she goes on to describe the desire to seek out contemporary issues and ideas from this juxtaposition, "how our ideas of sexuality, gender, race, environmental responsibility would set against [the explorer's] motivations." Indeed her point has been made, as poems such as, "Polar Explorer Matthew Henson," detail race,

What will he look like frostbit? Son

of the tropics, how will his dark blood

fare?

while others such as, "Against Solitude" discuss the possibility of homosexuality among these explorers,

I'd not thought

how soft a man's hip would be, how curved the flesh above the backs

of his thighs-listen.

Yet as she states, "they were human and therefore linked to my experience of the world," I feel the poignancy of her ties to such human ideas of identity wane through their rigidity, the rigidity of the historical sources themselves. For me the human identity which I see Bradfield viewing as strange or alien in her work, rightly so, becomes alien to the icy nature of the history it so heavily relies upon.

Neverthless, Bradfield's point, "we are strange creatures and the world is richer than we could have ever invented it to be," reflects an accurate manifestation of our existence. The poem I felt most exemplified this feeling was not in Ice but in the poem, "Creation Myth: Periosteum and Self." Here the reference to antlers and identity gave me a greater sense of the human element inherent in self through its more visceral, powerful, personal imagery and form,

Hormonally imbalanced females of all deer species

have been known to grow antlers.

This is what I choose. Periosteum rampant on my brow

and testosterone to activate it at the pedicle.

When Bradfield's poems escape the icy clutches that the historical source material the arctic entails her poems seem to bound forth looking at issues of gender and identity in ways not bound by the tedious reference of dead explorers.

Disappearing into Ice

Throughout poetry metaphor has been wrung-out, extracted, mined and now lies fallow, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Poetry has been forever moving towards greater vehicles of expressing emotion and existence, and as a result risen above the banal nature of metaphor as a novel poetic device. This is not to say it is not utilized, for contemporary poets find power in the juxtaposition of the surreal or subconscious as a poetic agent. Yet metaphor, in its lyric sense and history cannot stand alone.

To me, Elizabeth Bradfield's Approaching Ice could not free itself from the omnipresent and overexposed use of ice as a poetic metaphor. The most unrelenting metaphor can be seen in her series of poems spread throughout the book titled, "Notes on Ice in Bodwitch." In what was at first a refreshing utilization of unconventional text, using the glossary of terms from Nathanial Bodwitch's The American Practical Navigator,Bradfield used these terms in weak reference to her personal life. For instance:

ice bridge. 1. Surface river of ice of sufficient thickness to impede

or prevent navigation. 2. An area of fast ice between the mainland and

nearby inhabited islands used in winter as a means of travel.

Barrier and pathway. It's love that makes me so full of fury, so

unable to be tender.

Here, Bradfield's description of a thing of fury could break free from convention but instead it is tied to this overarching theme of ice. This furious love, a material rich with poetic potential is indelibly linked to the tiresome metaphor of an "ice bridge." The poems themselves don't seem to run away from this entrapment.

Similarly to her attachment of metaphor, Bradfield's use of history becomes equally sedentary and flat. The poems, which required a great deal of historical research on polar explorers seem so rooted in the past that when applied to more current, pressing emotion, they fall back and lose their strength. The fact that they are indeed not Bradfield's makes such a correlation between historical account and personal emotion weakens the poignancy of Bradfield's own reflections. For example her poem, "The Third Reich Claims Neu Schwabenland" juxtaposes an account of Nazi Germany "claiming" Antarctica and a personal diatribe on "claiming." While on the exterior both serve to address the pertinent question of identity and possession, by placing such emphasis on the historical the humanity within Bradfield's personal conflict loses its foundation. Here is the Nazi description of "possession":

Ice is not land, so how to claim it?

...

The planes Passat and Boreas were catapulted

from the chill deck of the Schwabenland

into the frigid, uncharted air.

Shouldered with Bradfield's:

Is this dog mine? She has begun.

some nights, to growl, low and defiant,

when I move her from the couch, hers.

I recognize Bradfield's argument, in the same vein as the Native Americans, that land, or identity, cannot be owned. However her method for detailing it loses some humanity in its correlation to history.

Throughout Bradfield's channeling of polar explorers I yearned for a new search for self and came up empty-handed, holding onto barren metaphor and icy humanity. While Bradfield scours the historical ice and elements of the antarctic her poetry becomes more detached from exploration itself. To be frank, how far can an allegorical poem of Ernest Shackleton take the discovery and articulation of our current existence?

Tony Hoaglund

I saw this review in the Times Book Review. Out of Gallaher's snarky yet insightful article I became interested in what Hoaglund actually has to say. That last poem the author quotes reminds me slightly of Bukowski. It looks like a great book.

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty Tony Hoaglund

90 pp. Graywolf Press

Grappling with Dean Young

When talking of Dean Young his use of the surreal in combination with the traditional breaks his poetry forth, as if its wild nature is trying to break free of containment and succeeding. Thus Young's poetry flows out in a style that shows the non-linearity of life, and the illogical existence we find ourselves in. As in the way the surrealists saw the horrors of World War I and the inability for old methods of art to produce meaning, Young seeks to show the inability of narrative and tradition to convey "reason."

In this way, reviewers such as David Sewell, see that the resulting, "idiosyncratic babel is not trash." Yet Sewell does help to point out where Young, "entrusts the not serious or not really interesting with a seriousness/prominence/presence it doesn't really deserve." Thus poems such as, "Ode to Hangover" might very well fall into this category. While the poem accurately portrays the inability of an ode to capture modern day existence, it focuses on the elation of the mundane with questioning importance, "After her I could eat a car but here's/a pineapple/clam pizza and Chinese milkshake/ yum but Hangover, you make me aspire/ to a saltine." As if the humor and importance of such an act of defying traditional poetics grows weary with every line.

Yet Sewell does well to point out the imagination and riskiness of Young's work, "Lives of the Surge Protectors" emerges for me as beautiful obliteration, flying through an ambiguity of narration, plot, grammar that ends in the beauty of the new. In fact to quote it does away with its ravenous pace and fluidity, regardless I present its first "sentence."

When she said what she said I

get out change the locks get

drunk fucked out detach drum

whocome howwhich no so I go

program the robot like I always do

in a loud den of panged sentinels

highlit and lifting off the page like

little wolves of italics orchestrating

the ephemeral, eflorescent As if

with blutzed butanes and all you hear

is snow, false as only facts can be.

Young presents an incredibly innovative and albeit beautiful description of anger, as if the words themselves lose their ability to grapple with their content, "drunk fucked" "whocome" "howwhich," ending with the powerful line, "false as only facts can be." Indeed nothing is factual in Young's work. It is the very essence of the surreal, in its attempt to come to terms with the world around it in new more meaningful ways. In this way Sewell's final point finds some commonality, "The poems always seem to be flying away--from easy sense making, from themselves, from us." Their break from tradition explores the heart of its inability and displays the non-linear, non-sensical ways in which existence presents itself.

Dean Young's Magical Mock-Ode

Upon reading Dean Young, the presence of tradition immediately presents itself, the use of standard form to structure verse. Yet, in an elliptical way, Young's utilization lets his painting of modern existence in all crazy, incoherency ring out. In The Elliptical Poets, Stephen Burt states, "elliptical poets treat literary history with an irreverent involvement. They create inversions, homages, takeoffs on old...poems: they also also adapt old subgenres...elegy...especially ode. (p. 48)" This quote leads us towards a greater understanding of Young's work. Young "inverts" the archaic world of the ode to incorporate the non-linearity and craziness inherent in today's search for meaning. For instance in the aptly titled, "Ash Ode" Young uses traditional language to portray ridiculous events.

Since I've /

Been incinerated, I've oft returned to this though,

that all things loved are pursued and never caught,

even as you slept beside me you were flying off.

Here the apparent description of incineration is juxtaposed with assonance and rhyme scheme, in "oft,"' "caught" "off," which are then disrupted by the words, "flying off."

While "Ash Ode" blatantly refers to its tradition irreverence, poems such as "Centrifuge" employ different characteristics of tradition to the same affect, here, using clear quatrain stanzas.

mistaken for clerks with gum on our shoes. I'm

trying not to panic. I'm trying to find the center,

drive a nail through it like a mercy killing.

Here, the structure of the "classic" might actually find itself at the center of a "mercy killing," in a meta-poetic sense. Does Young's "irreverent" disruption of tradition not send tremors through exhausted quatrains? The description of gum, first person pseudo-confessionalism, and simile of driving nails through, a seemingly lost center, break the mold of tradition by their content alone, yet when placed inside such a regimented structure, their significance multiplies.

Yet Young's work does not seem as bent on destruction of tradition as other contemporary poets, such as Richard Greenfield. Where Greenfield's work takes some ideas of antiquity and drowns them in chaotic mire, albeit with beautiful success, Young's approach resembles more of a "inversion," to take a word from Burt's vocabulary. Young's placement of the magical within the constricting lens of tradition makes his view of the world jump out against its entrapment in a meaningful, powerful way.