prose

The Selves

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Sonja Ahlers’ The Selves is a visual essay which combines collage, poetry, watercolor, calligraphy, prose and fabric. The result is a multi-layered and textured work that reveals something new every time you leaf through it. Although pastiche and mixed media immediately come to mind to describe Ahlers’ work, it may also be considered a new genre or a new way of looking at our lives as women in relation to mass media. As passive consumers of pop culture, we assimilate the images and narratives that mass media serve us. Unable to discern the promoters from the products and the dreams they’re selling, we model our various “selves” from babyhood to old age around the ideals these promoters project. At least, that’s my interpretation of the book, but yours may be very different. Now imagine someone appropriating these same images and presenting them in a new way as social commentary. For instance, Ahlers presents an intellectual side of Marilyn Monroe using a rare photograph of her reading, next to a text by Gloria Steinem describing how hard it was for men to reconcile Marilyn’s love for books with her physical appearance. We also see repeated images of Princess Diana throughout her life, from a young woman who marries a prince, to a princess who never lives happily ever after. We also see a very young Angelina Jolie in the company of her father, reminding us that beauty and fame do not exempt anyone from pain. The public is indeed very different from the private. Some serious themes such as suicide, child abuse, self-mutilation, female rivalry and abortion are raised in The Selves, but this book is not without humor. The images Ahlers uses are readily recognizable to any woman born in the 1970s or early '80s, and nostalgia is guaranteed. I enjoyed the author’s unapologetic acceptance of these images into her life and presenting them in a new light to show another side or expose another issue. This visual essay may be hard for some to embrace, but I applaud any artist-cum-author who takes on this challenge and does it well enough to land a publisher. Moving away from the old confines means not letting others define what an acceptable genre is.

Written by: Heather Leighton, August 26th 2010

The Bad Wife Handbook

admin — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:03:00 +0000

By Rachel Zucker

Wesleyan University Press

If in these modern times women had to hide potentially influential books from their husbands and others around them, The Bad Wife Handbook would be included among the silent list traded through some secret alley passage. Imagine pages of poetry and short prose ripped out then stuck inside of the bible so as not to draw attention or suspicion.

The Bad Wife Handbook is full of poetry that trips into the wholeness of married life - through the difficulties of monogamy, writing, children, and all the compromises made along the way. The poems express both emotional success and emotional repression bled out through words and ideas, like the sea and the universe. It is the honest truth of the bad against the good in life - or sometimes the other way around.

The collection, hidden in a pale blue book with a photographed of a wrinkled index card on its cover, tells us that marriage is impossible - the husband a beautiful creature you can’t, and sometimes don’t want to, escape. Children are desperate life drainers who use and take, yet are and always will be the best things ever produced from your body or mind. It journeys through sadness, love, and all that could happen in between.

I can’t say I would recommend this book to every woman I know. It may scare them off to one of the lesbian clubs that a good chunk of my friends already frequent. I can say that any woman in a long-term, committed, heterosexual relationship should read Rachel Zucker’s words. Knowing that her feelings are shared by others makes a girl realize that no matter how alone the compromises can make you feel, you are never really alone, and sometimes, giving in can make you the happiest you will ever need to be.

Written by: Susan Wilson, June 18th 2008

Willow Room, Green Door

admin — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:30:00 +0000

By Deborah Keenan

Milkweed Editions

Deborah Keenan's new poetry collection Willow Room, Green Door includes selections from her previous books - such as Kingdoms, The Only Window that Counts and Household Wounds - in addition to her most recent work. In a collection that spans a lengthy period of time, the reader gets a lovely sense of inhabiting a changing world with the poet, of walking through time, both historical and personal. This collection contains a beautiful diversity of forms and topics. There are prose poems and verse of many shapes and styles.

Some of my favorite poems in Willow Room feature sharp, intellectual responses to fine art and varied literature full of emotion and subtle wit. Some poems, such as "Night Walk": “The last lover you had before your first marriage/called a few weeks ago./You felt the heat” start out with a simple premise, then unspool to reveal much more, from the intimate to the political to the sharply witnessed sensual details: “A car goes by and you believe the silver bike/tied to the top is a Christmas tree” that make these poems ring authentic. Her poems are often sad, but strong, and often touch on female emotion and experience. I love the lines "I have not been done in by some reckless bonsai gardener/I am not an easy species" in her poem about searching for a metaphor and identity.

For me, reading these poems was like listening to a great hip-hop artist who is able to take everything they've seen and learned in their culture and stream forth a flow that puts everything in its right place. Even if you don't recognize every proper noun, they intrigue you and begin to make sense because of the clarity of their perfect contextualization. It's a piece of literature that made me want to reach out and learn more, to pay closer attention to the world that Deborah Keenan so ably observes.

Written by: Dominae Petrosini, July 7th 2007