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5.0 out of 5 stars
In the Museum of Exquisite Things, This Would be on Exhibit, November 11, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The Reservoir (Paperback)
In this astounding debut volume, Stonecipher studies with painstaking accuracy the psychodynamics of homeostasis: an organism's tendency toward maintenance of a stable psychological condition with respect to contending drives, motivations, and forces in relation to the outside world. In the book's title poem--what might be considered her ars poetica, her ars vida--Stonecipher forthrightly pronounces the aesthetic covenant of the reservoir: "I was anxious to tell my version of the story of what the world has done to me--but you must be careful how many times you ask to be rescued" ... "The flow must be regulated. Keep some water for the reservoir. Never spend it." The human reservoir, with its mechanism of dams and spillways, needs to allow for the regulated flow, the egress and congress of what it contains in order to maintain balance. Herein lies the struggle: One must risk disclosure, capture, in order to have one's inner life recognized and deemed beautiful. A perfectionist's rigor masks a starveling's thirst for satiety. Far from the flow of life, the tendency to not let go can produce a stagnancy in which the "done violet gusts" of yesterday's poppies become a choker of years. The psyche's refusal to change or admit impediment can result in the compensatory behaviors that Stonecipher examines here: the vicariousness and safety of fantasy, the aggrandizement of one's own sense of victimization, the attraction of ravishment where the pursuer divines the secretly contained desire of the pursued who remains passive, the need to see one's beauty reflected only in the glass of a vanity mirror.
There are many kinds of reservoirs or vessels for containment, some better adapted to the regulation of flow than others. Thus, Stonecipher writes in "The Specialists": "You came and went through my head like a small storm. It was only later I questioned the teacup." The skin, with its many pores, is better adapted for homeostasis. The skin both betrays and secretes the true fragrance of humanity, which some--Stonecipher singles out Americans here--find offensive, others pleasing. The body's mouths are portals to moisture, the id's river, a source that has the potential to suffuse and nourish everything. It is breaking of this skin, however painful, that allows for replenishment, as Stonecipher records in "The Orangerie."
If it is true, as some say, that a poem is as close as one can come to a photograph of one's own psyche and soma, then this collection constitutes the evidence of an artist's relentless drive to capture the psyche's oriole in the viewfinder. These poems are its album, at times risking death-defying high-wire acts of both psychological and stylistic daring. If art (in its range of diction, the complication or simplicity of syntax, clarity or occluded train of thought) imitates life, Stonecipher's great gift lies in exploring the full range within the limits of her viewfinder. In some poems, the reader must search diligently for the prize of what they wish to articulate, waiting at times until the end of the arc. In others, such as "The Forest" and "In and Out of the Museum," which begins with the poetic "Whither goest the treasurer?", Stonecipher pushes the envelope of poetic diction, while others stand poised in the middle distance, ready to be seen, ready for their close-up, "Album," "Mouth," "The Secret," "The Magnet," "The Specialists" among them.
Life, art, one's own story, and the beauty one finds there become a matter of how one chooses to frame the object, these the snapshots in the album. However, if narrative is the final governance, no matter how diligent the observer, the tale-bearer, the river will always overflow its banks; even the plots of one's own life will not dutifully remain constellated, storied. The boy in the story becomes a man, and "the only man one will ever love" becomes someone entirely different. A choker of years can become a string of blessings on the rosary of the river, depending upon a faith that allows life to be made much of, then let go. Surrender is the last thing learned here but surrender you will, dear reader, as to an album of Brassai's photographs taken at midnight in Paris, at once decadent and alluring but always in quest of only that which exquisitely sways the heart. If you are a connoisseur of what ravishes, you will be appeased.
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