91社区

鈥淪elf-Shaped Hole鈥�: The Speculative 鈥淚鈥� In Kirsten Kaschock鈥檚听Explain This Corpse

by Leah Claire Kaminski

搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Explain This Corpse听by Kirsten Kaschock (University of Washington Press, 2020).

To read Kirsten Kaschock鈥檚听Explain This Corpse, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry, is to enter a sort of poetic matrix. These are not poems that give primacy to feeling, though they contain it. Their purpose seems not to be to perform or elicit emotion, as much as to use it as a tool to show us other truths. Kaschock spins ordinary material into new worlds of speculation and experience, using surrealism, language play, and metaphor so stuck-with that it feels literal: the poetic self draws herself into being along with the hyper-real world around her. In the book鈥檚 ars poetica proem, the speaker declares:

听 听 听 听 听 To manufacture hunger I need
听 听 听 听 听 time and a stick and at the end
听 听 听 听 听 dangling like a fish from thread鈥�
听 听 听 听 听 carrot鈥�

At the end of the short poem the diagram is sketched even more clearly:

听 听 听 听 听 鈥�the stick,
听 听 听 听 听 the thread, my own hand holding
听 听 听 听 听 its famine-machine a foot beyond
听 听 听 听 听 the other one鈥�

With Kaschock鈥檚 syncopated, muscular rhythms and idiosyncratic syntax, 鈥渙ld man carrot,鈥� the stick, time are all made tactile, real.

Not 鈥渞eal鈥� as in something encountered in the world. Real as in material. In this poem鈥檚 word-world, time is as tangible as stick, as hunger. The proem ends with the speaker saying, in her signature stylized colloquialism: 鈥渢hose bits I call art.鈥� And in this collection every bit of the world鈥攕elf, galaxies, politics, language鈥攊s used in service of art, which is to say in service of a moving machine (or body) that makes ideas. 听

Stronger-than-metaphor play with object and language recurs throughout. 鈥淭he Cape was pale, and as I threw it round my shoulders, I depleted my ridinghood,鈥� Kaschock writes in a poem that uses the speaker鈥檚 presumably literal visit to Cape Cod as a way to explore witchcraft and womanhood. Landscape, body, concept all swirling together in the field.

This book doesn鈥檛 work like any others I鈥檝e recently read. Kaschock, an accomplished dancer as well as a writer, pinpoints her approach in an听听with Pew, where she is a fellow: 鈥淏oth dance and poetry听can听use intimate materials (the body, the voice) to transcend individuality鈥�The poet and the choreographer take great pains to elaborately carve out a self-sized hole through which their audience can newly perceive the universe.鈥�

We are used to the idea of 鈥渕aking the personal universal鈥� in writing, but this isn鈥檛 what Kaschock is saying, quite. It鈥檚 not 鈥渢he personal鈥� as much as it is 鈥渋ntimate materials,鈥� an unsentimental mining of the very self. It鈥檚 not 鈥渨ords,鈥� it鈥檚 鈥渢he voice鈥� (meaning, the self who speaks the words too).

And it鈥檚 not 鈥渦niversal鈥� but 鈥渢ranscending individuality鈥濃�擨 almost think she means the reader鈥檚, too. The commitment to art is almost complete, and a bit intimidating.

Kaschock鈥檚 poetry scrubs out its own world to create a new one, both clear and difficult. Formal experimentation is present (not-sonnets, concrete poems, a form of ten, ten-syllable lines inspired by music in the three surreal 鈥淐ircle of Fifths鈥� poems spread throughout the book). Conversations with other poets, too (in the form of 鈥渁fter鈥� poems and borrowed lines from Lerner, Atwood, Cavafy, and Bishop) betray Kaschock鈥檚 playfully formal approach. But the most consistent way her seriously playful inventiveness shows up is in her leaping technical word play, in shining evidence in 鈥淐ircle of Fifths (1-3)鈥�:

听 听 听 听 听 Most people are ports. Yes, some poets rape.
听 听 听 听 听 Navigate. Galvanize. Some prayers will die.
听 听 听 听 听 Most days are dry as air, dryer. Harder.

The poem ends these grinding, furious leaps with a strange and delightful punny annotation, scrambled message from an alternate universe鈥檚 classical music: 鈥�Applaudanum. Composed for one slow hand.鈥�

The poet-speaker鈥檚 very self is a craft element. In these poems, that pesky lyric I isn鈥檛 a constant presence (at one point she writes, 鈥淭he lyric I: one species of debris鈥�): and except in the rare poem grounded literally in circumstance, it doesn鈥檛 seem to be a fixed self when it does appear, almost instead a thought experiment or one among many metaphors. Kaschock plays with language, idea, and experience like a sculptor with clay, as if it鈥檚 all uniform.

In 鈥淒ear Bird,鈥� a poem not surreal but speculative, the speaker pushes metaphor until we鈥檙e not sure but that we should take it literally:

听 听 听 听 听 Feathers, in the past, have had me
听 听 听 听 听 coughing, stooping as I shouldered the mapled
听 听 听 听 听 woods, my bloody cape.

Ostensibly, this is a persona poem in the voice of a wolf, ending as it does with an unpunctuated, single-word line 鈥淲olf.鈥� But in the shapeshifting world of听Explain This Corpse, that doesn鈥檛 really seem to matter.

Even in 鈥減ersonal鈥� poems, as the love poem 鈥淓clipse Aubade,鈥� the book鈥檚 speaker veers between the metaphysical and the truly personal, estranging the personal images from any reliable sense of a speaker鈥檚 鈥渟elf.鈥� Here the literal domestic (鈥渘ow I鈥檓 more or less happy/to drape my leg over yours/and call it married鈥�) blossoms to something larger, stranger:

听 听 听 听 听 A woman needn鈥檛 have breasts
听 听 听 听 听 to threaten. I have knives, I鈥檝e
听 听 听 听 听 pills. The moon is cold, a know-
听 听 听 听 听 ing leech, filling her blousy
听 听 听 听 听 corpse with stolens. The sun, he
听 听 听 听 听 miscarries, trawling the crude-
听 听 听 听 听 streaked skyway.

When the reasonably literal 鈥淚 have knives, I鈥檝e/pills鈥� is linked through lineation and similar, declarative syntax to such intense personification as the moon and sun are dragged through, the reader equates, sees the poet鈥檚 world as one literally filled with miscarrying suns. Or the opposite: the poetic self is distanced, as metaphorical as that 鈥渒now-/ing leech鈥� the moon.

Or in 鈥淓xaltation,鈥� an ode to skin is deeply physical but in the elemental, distilled nature of that physicality, also somehow impersonal:

听 听 听 听 听 Even as you double over, retract within me
听 听 听 听 听 vocals of aureole, of freckle, mold
听 听 听 听 听 and the worm-slash up my ankle-back
听 听 听 听 听 -calf where I gave unnatural loud birth to a slippery achilles, newly
听 听 听 听 听 twinned, eel-shredded, I accept you
听 听 听 听 听 unbook are my best record and home.

Obviously specific to an individual鈥檚 body, but in the extreme attention to language (鈥渧ocals of aureole鈥�!听 surgery as giving 鈥渦nnatural loud birth鈥� to a tendon!) it鈥檚 galvanized into sculpture. Not transparent confession but a bas-relief of the self.

The book, as its title would indicate, is chock-full of corpses. The moon, the world鈥檚 species, the speaker, Ophelia (in the book鈥檚 title poem), capitalism, bodies eaten by deer: all aging, dying, or near death. Even an imagistic lyric about nightfall becomes apocalyptic. But, except when discussing climate change, the speaker is not death-obsessed in any romanticized, depressed, or hopeless way. It鈥檚 death as engine for life. Death as听companion听to life. And life ripples through these poems. The two converge, and the emotion underscoring the formal intelligence of this book erupts, in 鈥淥 Nibiru,鈥� a 30-page poem comprising the book鈥檚 middle section.

Here Kaschock dives deeper into the book鈥檚 fascination with death, or even more than death, extinction: 鈥渁 hard rain of trailing comets鈥�will obliterate us鈥� she says. And later, 鈥淚f at all moments we faced certainty not of single end but scorched sphere, we might alter the ways we attempt to translate ourselves into the future.鈥� It鈥檚 not just climate change and world-ending collision, though. This is a deeply personal poem鈥攁 large, self-shaped hole in the center of the book, a deeply earnest (though inescapably intelligent) go at 鈥渢ranslating herself.鈥�

The speaker鈥檚 conversation about climate destruction and obliteration with the world-ending (and apocryphal) 鈥減lanetary object鈥� Nibiru mixes with day-to-day musings about mothering and leaving, about standing at the sea, about the girl the speaker never had, about phones and mothers, and occasionally the two threads collide:

听 听 听 听 听 There is some deep crevasse in me that hikers have fallen down.

听 听 听 听 听 But I am melting, I am melting.

The poet become an entire, imperiled landscape, poked with death and sex and literature and philosophy. Crawling with them, as is the world. 鈥淢ust I be so outside I鈥檓 theoretical?鈥� she asks. In Kaschock鈥檚 particular, hard-nosed alchemy, her poems use elements of language as tools to contort her very poetic self, until the voice becomes a body, twisting, leaping, into flight.

How limitless, how tangible, how strange.听