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Re-Routed: verse for the human animal by [Maxime, Francesca Marguerite]

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Francesca Marguerite Maximé

Re-Routed: verse for the human animal Kindle Edition

by Francesca Marguerite Maxime (Author), Claudia "Cotrutza" French (Illustrator), Alexander Norelli (Illustrator),

6 customer reviews

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In Re-Routed: verse for the human animal, New York City television news anchor Francesca Marguerite Maxime, author of Rooted: a verse memoir, boldly leads us into the forest of life's unexpected detours, where we encounter the wisdom and instincts of animals, the quirks of dating in New York City, modern fertility methods, and the importance of personal boundaries and self-acceptance. She explores the jungle of life: birth and death, hope and failure with an equally steady hand. Courageous, provocative and alive, Maxime uses vivid prose and daring honesty to take on life’s surprises. Her second collection is one of resilience marked by a fearless march toward the unknown.

Length: 162 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled

Product details

File Size: 418 KB
Print Length: 162 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0615802087
Publisher: Blue-Cream Books; 1 edition (April 17, 2013)
Publication Date: April 17, 2013
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00CFRPXJ4
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,993,897 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #51505 in Poetry (Kindle Store)
- #52187 in Memoirs (Kindle Store)
- #175887 in Memoirs (Books)

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July 20, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Francesca (or Fran or Frances) Maxime's new work proves several things: That honest, autobiographical work is ceaselessly fascinating; that intelligent and attractive people are afforded great privileges; and that everyone - even the aforementioned "beautiful" people - suffer pain, insecurity, occasional unemployment and loneliness. Re-Routed is at its best when Maxime is relating her life struggles, such as her failed engagement (her fiance ended the relationship two days before the wedding, a tidbit she mentions several times), her troubles with her half-siblings and her weight struggles. The style of the book, free verse, makes for a quick read. Packed with emotion, I kept wanting more information: what was in her first book that caused it to be "stillborn"? what were the circumstances under which she padded her expense reports? what part did her cheating in high school play in her acceptance into Harvard? This isn't a criticism but a testament to the concise nature of the work.

Curiously, three pages of the book are dedicated to describing a scene in the documentary "Buck." The scene being examined is poetry in itself, and I recommend the movie highly, but Maxime's talent lies more in self-examination (yes, slightly bordering self-absorption) than analyzing current events or a scene in a movie. That's not to say the Newton material isn't heart-breaking and well-done, just that it might belong in a different book.

I highly anticipate Francesca's next book and regret that "Rooted" is unavailable. That anticipation and regret are both due to the strength of "Re-Routed."

Comment

I love this young poet's work!

September 2, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Francesca Maxime's style is raw and emotionally honest. She is a very strong and impressive new voice in American poetry.

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To go again and in a new direction -- "Re-routed"

May 19, 2013

Format: Paperback

"I wish I could stuff all my animal instincts into the bottom drawer of my mother's bureau and seal it"

Looking at the table of contents with titles such as "Stillborn," "Not Having Sex," and "I Am Not a Virgin" and remembering the naked transparency of Rooted, it's hard to imagine that Re-routed: Verse for the Human Animal could be any more open and revealing. Poet Francesca Marguerite Maximé gallantly revisits the world of word play, delivering her next masterwork of accessible and unguarded poems.

These poems do not simply serve as examples of craft, vulnerability, and observation, a vehicle to make sense of the world around her, to make poetry of it, but these poems stand as full length mirrors catching every line of life, every curve of destruction, every heavy hip rounded with hope, and every eyeful of flaws, emotional and physical.

Destruction in Re-routed encompasses the devastation of her innocence, the ruin of her first book, and the extinction of her old animalistic nature. Stripping away an experience and all its effects, rendering it bare, can be difficult and dangerous work, yet Maximé steps up to the mirror, studies her own eyes, flesh, feet, and hands, and then turns that full length mirror and casts it upon her world.

Re-routed: Verse for the Human Animal is broken into eleven sections from Animals, History, and Men to Awakening, Transitions, and Afterlife. We learn that it is tough being the mirror for others, to reflect back their harshness. Many times, with equal force, others strike back. In first poems "Stillborn" and "Drive" Maximé addresses the fate of her first primer.

Rooted: a verse memoir was a beautiful and breathing book. It was living in both the past and present, and eager for the future. A creation of mind and will, Rooted was cleverly written in the interest of catharsis, yes, but ultimately in love. That love was stricken with the fever of hatred -- the hatred of having the mirror turned toward you, forcing you to face what's there, and like a stillborn child the poet's baby was put to rest.

These first poems also question the process of loss and survival, a theme that is the foundation for the rest, the theme that makes these personal experiences so universal.

To celebrate or to mourn? The poems of Re-routed are a road map toward ultimate happiness or toward emotional demise. They are a reminder that each choice determines which route we will take. Each route determines who we'll end up.

"Lions," a poem about a mother lioness who must abandon her child in order to survive, is perhaps the best example of the elements that make this collection so intoxicating and effective. It features an external catastrophe that puts pressure on a mother and informs her relationship with her broken child. Confronted with an unimaginable choice, this mother acts out of her animal instincts.

This lioness and the coyote of a subsequent poem are not unlike the human animal, breaking as easily as does the human heart. From wild & free to wounded, the canid of the poem "Coyote" is caught in a trap and then finds rescue and release. She finds herself.

It is in this poem that Maximé begins examining nature and a longing to return to the simplistic time when she was more nature than traps, controls, and mental shackles, though those boundaries are placed on every animal so that it can survive.

But the coyote won't be tamed.

The paradox in the poet's life, as is for so many of us, lies in the contradictions of who she is, who she was, what she wants, and what she believe she deserves.

In the poem "Animal Rescue" we start to focus on economic and social status and the role it plays in her life, her decisions, and in her healing. Wealth fills her ideas of self worth, but doesn't satisfy her feelings of worthlessness.

In "Baggage" status is reflected clearly and completely. Maximé compares her relationship with the ex-fiancé, introduced in Rooted and who finds reprieve in Re-routed, to Elizabeth Taylor. The glamour, the class, and popularity are central to what attracted her to their union.

More importantly the reader is able to query the very nature of attraction. Often times we are attracted to people, not out of love, but out of need. We gravitate toward a lover, not because we want to be with them, but because we want to be them. They possess some quality that we don't recognize in ourselves that we desperately want. For Maximé it is feeling like the princess she always wanted her father to inspire, but was unable.

After many poems reflecting on the relationship with her prince charming, the one which finally made her feel regal, the reader is left to wonder if love was the foundation on which they were built, or if the coyote was more interested in being worn like an exquisite fur.

The engagement and abandonment, that energy and circumstance, that passed between them was the tornado that hit her life, uprooted her foundation, knocked her off course, and shattered the very fiber of her innocence, an innocence we surmise was locked tightly away like an emerald and then only shared with him. And he broke it.

It is the why she shared it with him that means so much to the advancement of her journey, to the aching and the healing. It is the why that becomes the invitation. The why is what we see in ourselves.

He is so meticulously echoed from the page that he becomes real like a leaf in a Frost poem we long to find and photograph. The reader will want to meet him, to hear his side, and to see the house they shared together.

Maximé devotes so many letters and phrases to that moment in her life it seems the poet fears he never loved her, or that there really is someone more suited for him than she. The work never questions whether or not he was truly suited for her -- a wild coyote, a lioness.

In "It Wasn't Supposed To Be This Way" the one thing all animals share in common, is considered -- the need to be loved and that without it all animals become desperate. She expresses the need to still be exalted in her ex's life, to be chosen. This ex is also the one by which all others are measured, very telling in itself.

In "How He Sees Me" we are allowed to inspect the role of friends in connection with our emotional hardship and health. It is also the piece that reminds us to never go back in relationships, not even in the relationship with ourselves.

From there pieces like "It's Been Eight Years Since My Ex and I Broke Up" and "Boxes" express the poet's mourning the girl she used to be, making way for the woman she is today. With each passing line we see her surrender to the peace etched in her lungs and with it she begins to breath.

This is a book that allows words to wrestle with the truth, to challenge the heart and head. She has gone through the process of self discovery and found herself, but still we hurt with her, walk with her as she trudges through the lie.

Our poet believes some vibrant part of herself was lost in her past, some delicate part destroyed, and she yearns to get it back. She doesn't yet understand the key things the woman has gained by letting go of the girl.

"The old self" is a recurring motif throughout the book. It is one that reveals that the poet is both the coyote and the trap. An injured animal struggling urgently to be free, a woman who doesn't realize that life takes. Some things we should be willing to let go.

What's left has to be enough. In "Blood Oranges and a Disco Mix Tape" the idea that someone can do everything for someone else, and in support of them, but never be enough is approached. That idea is at the crux of Maximé's relationships, the wanting to be enough, but never being sure that she is.

"A Poem About Violence" chronicles the assault on her significance -- the significance of her womb, of her choices, her desires, her envy, and the significance of the potential for her life. Has she truly wasted it?

Not everything is desperation and compromised self esteem. Maximé enjoys a repaired relationship with her mother, the legitimacy she seeks, prospects, possibilities, and promise.

Mixed in with the "dark circles, brown spots, blemishes, and thinning hair" is "decorating, shopping, roasting, serving, and making sure". This poet has fought for a solid place in peace.

She has advanced to the stage of healing that is directly linked to generosity and charitable giving toward others, a critical sign that the pain no longer has her locked within herself.

The shame that kept her from soaring starts to disappear as the poems march on. The desperation -- having the desire, but believing you're not deserving -- dissipates.

Of course she still wants to make loved ones proud. She still clings to the thought of motherhood. She worries about the changes that come with age and how they might affect her career as a television anchor. And she yearns for love and romance and kisses and kids.

But now it is with a certain strength, a genuine resolve. Poems like "Good Omen" are written in understanding of how charmed she is and of her "delicate might".

This book belongs to anyone who has acted out of desperation, of wanting to be chosen. Anyone who has ever deeply wanted to be loved will identify with each bloody and bursting line. We will respect the poet as she arrives at happiness and wholeness because we know many of us never do.

As Maximé finds her way, we find ours along with her, touched to tears because her words stroke something torn within us, something in need of repair. Because of her effortless way with words, and resolve to bypass her own fears we are able to reserve judgment and find therapy.

In the end, taming the beast is what she wants, so that she might survive, but the reader will discover that she doesn't need a coyote whisperer, but instead someone who loves coyotes just the way they are and who knows how to be himself with her...just the way she is. We will hope for her that this is her next discovery.

Interesting, complex, but appropriately incomplete, Re-routed: Verse for the Human Animal is a brochure of freedom, featuring a trip through patience and perception. Maximé teaches that every animal has training and instinct, but some give over to one more than the other. She asks which kind of animal are you?

"But like the meows from Lily's kittens
birthed in a pile of cotton underwear and silky nightgowns
My bad behavior -- those animal instincts --
still cries to be let out"

3 people found this helpful

Comment

May 7, 2013

Format: Paperback

I received my copy today and could not put it down. Page after page, I was enthralled by the sheer honesty of the author as she shares her search for self. She is fearless,exposing her naked soul and revealing her deepest thoughts. The rawness of her pain, her shattered dreams, and her fears for the future are expressed so succinctly that the reader can't help but experience the emotion of it all. It makes one ponder whether they could be so brave. Perhaps Maxime gains strength through her vulnerability because despite baring her spirit, with all of its complexity, she seems to have found a comfort and acceptance in who she is that is hopeful and inspiring. Few books have ever been so authentic.

2 people found this helpful

Comment

How to review without spoiling?

May 6, 2013

Format: Paperback

This is Francesca's second volume of poetry, and it is wonderful narrative of the life and times of an extraordinary woman, bumps and potholes included. Included here is one poem that, if it does not move you profoundly, means that you must call the police to report the theft of your soul.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

I love everything about Francesca's voice

March 18, 2018

Format: Paperback

I love everything about Francesca's voice. It's relatable, inspiring, powerful, and I hope this book makes it around the world and back because it's a true gift to anyone who is alive.

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