Macular Hole [Paperback]

Catherine Wagner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

Catherine Wagner's poems proclaim a finitude that is anything but final, that is instead embodied and generative. That Wagner is in love with the world and its transactions--perceptions, superficial and otherwise; childbearing, painful and otherwise; gains, financial and otherwise--allows for a poetry that is full of song yet brazenly topical.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this unexpectedly direct sophomore effort, Wagner blends charm with aggression. Wagner's Miss America (2001) showed a wary critic of consumer culture questioning linguistic givens; these poems, while no less self-conscious, show considerably more verve. "I'm an example, and experimental/ Attempt to assess how a kid of my talents/ Responds when she's given the life that I was," one poem says; two pages later, though, Wagner disavows "The glamorous self and its story." Ragged exclamations and folk and playground rhymes give her choppy, hip discourse surprising energy; her anger—and her willingness to identify its causes—set it further apart. Some of those causes come from sexual experience, others from the travails of raising a young son. Childbearing and motherhood take over the second half of this fairly short book, to fiery effect: "I hate the baby, stop crying... I hate you coming over my life like a bag"; "At my breast/ He sold himself/ To me as my/ Needer." Readers accustomed to canny ironies may find her "outrageous,/ power-outageous" interjections too demonstrative, but her powerful ends finally justify their strenuous means.
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Review

"In this unexpectedly direct sophomore effort, Wagner blends charm with aggression. Wagner's Miss America (2001) showed a wary critic of consumer culture questioning linguistic givens; these poems, while no less self-conscious, show considerably more verve. 'I'm an example, and experimental/ Attempt to assess how a kid of my talents/ Responds when she's given the life that I was,' one poem says; two pages later, though, Wagner disavows 'The glamorous self and its story.' Ragged exclamations and folk and playground rhymes give her choppy, hip discourse surprising energy; her anger--and her willingness to identify its causes--set it further apart. Some of those causes come from sexual experience, others from the travails of raising a young son. Childbearing and motherhood take over the second half of this fairly short book, to fiery effect: 'I hate the baby, stop crying... I hate you coming over my life like a bag'; 'At my breast/ He sold himself/ To me as my/ Needer." Readers accustomed to canny ironies may find her 'outrageous,/ power-outageous' interjections too demonstrative, but her powerful ends finally justify their strenuous means."--Publisher's Weekly

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Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Fence Books (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974090913
• ISBN-13: 978-0974090917
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,680,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars pow a new poetry, January 1, 2007

By 

Kelli L. Rush - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Macular Hole (Paperback)

If much of so-called experimental poetry seems like a lie, try Catherine Wagner. She speaks truths. Rather than abandoning meaning, she squeezes all the juices she can out of simple English words. "Pie," for instance, becomes a verb. "I was trying to pie myself," Wagner writes. Why is Wagner trying to pie? Pie suggests comfort, care-giving, apples, abundance. It also suggests housework, apron-wearing, self-denial, shells. Not that there's anything wrong with pieing, but perhaps the woman is trying to be less than she is.

There is darkness here as well as lightness. A child's thigh bruise is made up to look pink. What is going on there? In another instance, a pregnant Wagner is suspended in a hammock looking at her toes. She has a painter's or an architect's eye for lines, spaces, shadows, reflections. Her phrases can be musical and memorizable, as in: "A day like a thing on a fork it arrives."

I liked Wagner's earlier book Miss America as well, but Macular Hole has more dimension, perhaps as a result of childbirth and motherhood. The writing in this book is less social commentary, more experience. Here is the baby:

"Tyrant. Asleep and saying huu,
fantastic waxen kicking
figurine, like a kick in the head, little
fat bag, a good drug
I see more of the
him in."

How she speaks to me.

Judging from Wagner's online prose, she is steeped in the feminist and power politics paradigm of the academic left. Even if you're not interested in that, you can enjoy and learn from these turns of phrase. Here's my favorite. One poem ends:

"Give the woman a pedestal
bouncy pedestal bingbong
my ring rang on"

Ring rang. Have two words ever been more perfectly placed? My heart pounds.

I can't wait for the anthology on motherhood that Wagner is co-editing.