Sometimes it’s exciting to sit with a book of poems that flouts my desires and aesthetic preferences. I’m talking about content as well as style here. Language too. Such a book presents me with my greatest challenge as a critic, to talk about what instructs and inspires me rather than what I already know I love.
Julia Guez’s debut poetry collection, In an Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also a Frame, fits this particular bill. Let’s begin with her title, as it alone nudges me back on my heels. It’s abstract and immediately triggers questions. Is the “glass case” referred to truly invisible? If so, how can it be seen, or registered at all, and why should a reader care about it? Wouldn’t any glass case serve as a suitable frame? Isn’t the title emphasizing a point that is already obvious to an observer, since a glass case (even an invisible one) is meant to frame or hold something inside? Also, there’s some interesting quality about the three-dimensional glass case flattened into a two-dimensional “frame,” instead of a “box” or other recognizable geometric figure. I find the title off-putting because it’s strange and intellectually demanding. But that’s my problem. My best thesis regarding Guez’s title is that it provides an image of longing, a strategy to build some kind of poetic shape (or “glass case”) around feelings that (for Guez) are impossible to embody otherwise. It’s a tricky title, but loaded with meaning and a suitable vessel for the poems that follow.
Guez’s poems are minimal, stationary, and dioramic. Each one puts me in mind of a small art installation, something constructed in a closet or maybe a box. There is an intimate confessional tone to many of the poems, especially those addressed to a figure named “George” who pops up here and there. But the reader is usually given a keyhole, voyeuristic view, which hints at how carefully Guez arranges an installation before allowing us to see it. Here is the book’s opening poem, “Still Life with Vicodin,” in its entirety:
Maybe there is no magic, no Technicolor,
but inside the seed, there is a kingdom.
Ask me anything, I will tell you the truth.
It is a fatal wound for every wolf and thimble.
Even the night watchman is not immune.
We may as well sing, George.
Inside the throat,
a carriage, a pony, a parachute.
The poem suggests danger and maybe a whiff of existential anxiety. And it operates in a discursive manner aimed at expressing powerful feeling, though the burden of finding (and gleaning) emotional resonance from spare images such as the seed, wolf, and thimble falls on the reader. Like all poems, Guez’s are feelings in search of frames, and even when a frame is found (in this case the motif of the still life) the poem yields just as many questions as answers. “Telling the truth” to George may be flawed, or even fatal, but the speaker advocates for singing anyway, despite the possible flawed character and quality of the singing voice. (The sounds of a carriage, a pony, and a parachute are not likely not very musical, at least in my imagination.) Perhaps that explains why “We may as well sing, George,” sounds absolutely resigned. More questions: To whom will the speaker and George sing? To each other? And how does this urge to sing address the poem’s title, the reference to “Vicodin” especially? Is the stillness shared between the speaker and George? Is singing the narcotic painkiller, or is it meant to nullify the drug’s effects? Forgive me my wayward inquiries, reader. I’ve never written a book review that has trafficked in so many questions.
What I appreciate in Guez’s work is that it’s not fashionable; it’s not tapping into the zeitgeist sweeping through American poetry today. When most poets publish a first book these days, identity and intersectionality are usually front and center, loudly defined. I believe this reshaping of the American lyric in the new millennium is a development worth championing. It represents an excess of feeling driven by a toxic political climate, anxiety over the future, and the alluring influence of social media in our lives.
But I wonder how that context informs or positions a poet like Guez. Her poetics are not inclined toward politics, self-fashioning, or vocal boldness. Yet she’s a confident poet. Guez elbows her way into the contemporary scene by rejecting most of the sanctioned contemporary stances and strategies. Guez’s minimalism and humor are most remarkable in this regard. The following three poems, the shortest in her book, illustrate Guez’s exceptional poetics:
- “On the Airstrip at Tambor, en Route to Monteverde”
But I can be happy anywhere, George.
- “Have We Made It Across the Vast Plain of Night?”
No.
- “Concerning This New Fear Something Else Will Befall You —
Which, Of Course, It Will — And What Then”
The first piece evokes a recognizable kind of American restlessness and loneliness. One doesn’t need the act of travel to spark deep emotion, which is more ironic than ever now that we live in a time when a place such as Monteverde can be reached in hours instead of days. I like that this sentiment is delivered confidently, prima facie. The second poem, which features dynamic play between the title (a question) and a one word poem, “No,” suggests that there is no arrival, that the speaker, and by proxy all of us, are powerless, vulnerable, suspended. That interplay reminds me of the book’s title, and the idea that perhaps all human feelings are preserved inside “invisible glass.” I don’t detect desperation or fear in Guez’s vocalizing here, just a matter-of-fact resolution to an ongoing argument between speaker and listener. Whether that listener is George, or all of us, it hardly matters.
The third “poem” is just the title itself, surrounded by white space, an open question that isn’t even fulfilled as a question. (Note that it lacks proper punctuation — a question mark — at the end.) This kind of thrilling minimalism, and a commitment to the sentiment fully delivered in the title itself, serves as an unusual (and unusually bold) ending to a first book of poems. It’s radically open-ended, white space on repeat. It carries the wisdom of a self-realized poet. It goes beyond minimalism by extinguishing the poem proper, which is such a bold move in an era that places premium value on self-proclamations, broad public claims, and cris de coeur.
[Published by Four Way Books on September 3, 2019, 84 pages, $15.95 paperback]