By Judith Fitzgerald
TODAY'S POET:
SUSAN HOLBROOK (April 21)
Susan Holbrook is the author of 1999's misled (Red Deer) and 2004's Good Egg Bad Seed (Nomados). Her poetry collection, Joy Is So Exhausting, is forthcoming from Coach House this October. She teaches North American literatures and creative writing at the University of Windsor and has just co-edited The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Dr. Thomas Dilworth: Holbrook is the one Language poet I not only can bear to read but actually enjoy reading (because whatever she writes is smart, interesting, usually amusing, sometimes hilariously funny). This poem, which will appear in her second collection, Joy Is So Exhausting, gives directions for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in which body parts are identified metaphorically. A metaphor is a lie that tells the truth, and what enlivens language is the lie as much as the truth. The metaphors in this poem come from the Song of Songs, Oscar Wilde, Internet blather, etc. (and comprise a sort of cultural inventory); but, their main effect is defamiliarisation. You see the body in a new focus if you see it at all. The poem stays wild in being not fully understood, at least by me. Is the "hinge" you tap the jaw? What are "the mark of your spiritual maturity" and "the very sensitive barometer / of your physical and emotional well-being?" I don't know. Some metaphors do not lie so well. The hand is like a leaf of the Kashmiri "chinar" tree by having veins, and fingers or points, and by being at once exotic and ("the / other big mitt") commonplace. Later it is "the map of yourself" because of lines significant to palm-readers. So we appreciate anew the hand. How well "satin" suits the neck; but, why and how is it a "tower of Lebanon?" ("Distant sea" is right for that part of us that rumbles with liquid.) "Rose and shell" are the mouth because of lips and teeth, "windswept" by breath and "pomegranate cut in twain" because of wet colour and because tasting it may seal the victim's stay in Hades. The chest is a "bowle of creame" (especially if it's female). The poem explains how, from an inside viewpoint, the nose is a "sink." The "reborn butterfly" evokes the traditional image of the psyche / soul that escapes the mouth at death. Lying outrageously is turned up several degrees in the penultimate stanza, which opens with reference to blowing into the nose rather than the mouth; but, I'm not sure where it goes from there. Holbrook is, I think, one of the best living poets anywhere.
Red Coral-to-Wet Castanet
Tap victim on the hinge
and shout, "Are you okay?"
If there is no response:
tilt the victim's fragile egg,
apple pointing up.
Place one chinar leaf under
the victim's satin tower
and gently lift. At the
same time push with the
other big mitt on the
victim's distant sea. This will
move the mark of your spiritual maturity
away from the very sensitive barometer
of your physical and emotional well-being
to open the airway.
Immediately look, listen and feel
for air. While maintaining the
backward 500-channel-media-universe tilt
position, place your bloomen red
rose and shell the wind swept
close to the victim's
big front door for microbes
and complex air conditioner. Look
for the bowle of creame
uncrudded to rise and fall
while you listen and feel
for the return of air.
Check for about five seconds.
If the victim is not
breathing: Check for and clear
any foreign matter from the
victim's font of information. Give
four quick breaths. Pinch the
victim's sink by which the
braine doth purge itself of
phlegm with the bunch
of ragged carrots that
is on the victim's crown
of the face to prevent
leakage of air; open your
wee cave wide; take a
deep breath; seal your pomegranate
cut in twain with a
knife of ivory around the
victim's round suctorial funnel, and
blow into the victim's wet
scarlet wings of a reborn
butterfly who trembles on the
rose petal as Life floods
his strange body with four
quick breaths just as fast
as you can.
The germ reservoir-to-super sniffing machine method, instead of
the cake hole-to-lilies which drip wet myrrh method, can be
used in the same sequence
described above. Maintain the backward
lofty treetop tilt position with
one map of yourself on the
victim's piece of luncheon meat
stretched across a basketball. Remove
the other sprout from under
the swinging door and close
the victim's freshly cracked fig.
Blow into the victim's tower
of Lebanon that looketh toward
Damascus.
These breaths should be brief
and gentle to prevent air
from entering the bottomless pit
when it comes to this stuff.
-- Unpublished (© 2009 Susan Holbrook. Reprinted by permission of the poet. Exclusive to The Globe and Mail. All Rights Reserved.)
