3.0 out of 5 stars
When it's good, it's very, very good., April 1, 2008
This review is from: Magnetic North (Hardcover)
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
I spent the first part of this book wondering what all the fuss was about, honestly; it's good, solid work, but there wasn't really anything that stood out, that really caused me to prick up my ears and take notice. Then, however, came the last section of the book. And when Magnetic North sings, it really takes off.
"You would/swear she hadn't a thought in her head/except for her buttermilk waffle and//its just proportion of jam. But while/she laughs and chews, half singing/with the lyrics on the radio, half//shrugging out of her bathrobe in the/kitchen warmth, she doesn't quite/complete the last part, one of the//sleeves--as though, you'd swear, she/couldn't be bothered--still covers/her arm. Which means you do not//see the cuts." ("The Prodigal")
It just goes along, and then whack, right in the face. But, as the poem goes on, there is nothing of castigation, nor-- and this is where it really gets interesting-- of curiosity. It just is; "she isn't stupid, she can see that we/who are children of plenty have no/excuse for suffering we//should be ashamed and so she is/and so she has produced this many-/layered hieroglyphic..."
If the entire volume had been at this level of intensity, it would have shot straight to the top of my beast reads of the year list. (Of course, it's highly probable that, in that case, no one else would have liked it all that much; such is the curse of being me.) I like its last twelve pages a great deal, however, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing more of Linda Gregerson's work. ***
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Elegance of Complexity, March 31, 2008
This review is from: Magnetic North (Hardcover)
Psychologists and media theorists, who study visual perception, speak of a phenomenon called perceptual completion. This occurs when our brain fills in the missing information in a given image (think "connect the dots"). Magnetic North, by Linda Gregerson, is a study of the intellectual cognate to this theory. Gregerson's scholarly voice juxtaposes dissimilar thoughts and draws us, self-consciously, into this, often taken for granted, process of completion. Her speakers pull us out of conversation, observation, the poem itself and, most importantly, any desire to oversimplify. Her verse is learned, though not in an archaic or stilted sense. She reaches into her intellectual well when it's both economical and sonorous. There's nothing puffy or pretentious about it. Neither is she a romantic poet of everyday language. But then, it's the wisdom of the everyday, not just the absolutes of science, that she finds so troubling.
In "Sweet," a mother chides that civilization cannot go on this way, as long as "we/ have so much/ and the other people so little"(1). The reaction to this is a callous and cynical "Sweet"(1). But this assault, on an endearing if naive world view, comes from a separate voice in the poem. Life is not "sweet," nor should our attitude towards it be contemptuous. Both of these pathologies, according to the Magnetic North, discard all the beautiful complexity around us.
Her tone is objective, and her language impressive--but she will not let it control the conversation. If nothing else, this is poetry of internal conversation: the conversations in us, within those around us, and throughout history. Specifically, "Dido in Darkness" appears to be a dialogue between voices of uncertain origin. They could be two different people, or two sides of an internal monologue. One voice describes, in a casual way, the makeshift play it saw, while the other, on the opposite but overlapping half of the page, delves deeper:
...and then they were nearly
stymied.
*Until?
Till someone brought the pitcher in...
A temporal trespass?
*A temporal trespass de-
*liberate because we're most
*convinced by that which most
*requires our help.(58)
(*lines set to the right, and below, preceding unmarked lines)
When we can't see the wires or the stage hands, we are separated from the performance. The interaction she witnesses makes the play real. Its complexity is revealed through a like complexity in this poem. It challenges us to determine the source of the dialogue, and questions our ability to understand the poem as a result.
The poem "De Magnete," tellingly located in the center of this work, speaks of the historical attempts to locate the magnetic north pole, and reveals Gregerson's ability to blend the scientific and the poetic. She describes Edmund Halley's study of the magnetic north:
His ship was called the Paramore
(two years at sea), his blazon
to the body of the loved one was
a Map, the first, of Deviation.
Nailed it. But
("the Svaldbard archipelago, a little
north") the triumph of lovers was ever
short-lived: the pole, it seems,
is peregrine. Does not stay put.(38-39)
The ever shifting magnetic pole reminds us of the constantly changing body of scientific knowledge, as well as the very human need to locate, to place, and connect. Separated into six parts, shifting repeatedly between historical fact and poetic invention, the poem makes us fully aware of our role in creating meaning. Our antipathy to division forces us to make tenuous connections, or we go a different way.
"Bicameral," is a haunting example of our other reaction to division. She encounters a young boy in Bolivia who has a severely cleft palate:
I know the world has harsher
things...
...I know, but this one
broke me down. They brought him in
with a bag on his head. It was
burlap, I think, or sisal. Jute.
They hadn't so much as cut eyeholes.(5)
This is a vivid illustration, revealing the trauma we feel when confronted by the disjunctions inherent in the natural world. We erect screens when the division is too obvious or too difficult to reconcile.
Gregerson, in poem after poem, does a truly extraordinary job of peeking behind the screens, without indulging in the sometimes-horrific scenes she discovers. Where we would try to force things together, she disrupts the process. The digressive voices slip in to remind us that we cannot master our social or physical environment. However, she is not suggesting that knowledge of any kind is impossible. In "Elegant," we learn it is "far/ more elegant, to/ keep the single system and discard the extra cells it spawns.../as leaves/preserve the tree by learning/ to relinquish it" (64). Shedding the slough of self-deception, we can see the beauty and complexity it hides. Gregerson's Magnetic North elegantly removes the connections we so laboriously construct.
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