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.