Review by Anne
Heide
Susan
MaxwellÕs first book, Passenger, investigates the colossal landscape of
war with deliberate yet inexhaustible language. This series of poems portrays
the displacement and disarticulation created by war with surprising lyrical
cohesion; Passenger is built from the language of war tempered with the
lyric of possibility. Calling into question our most fundamental forms of
habitation—the body, the home, and the city—Maxwell assembles and
disassembles our familiar forms while they war against each other, scatter each
other, and return to each other, forming the fragile and irrevocable series of
relationships that emerge in the landscape of war.
In this
text, the refuse of conflict is scattered throughout: organs are dislocated
from their bodies and begin to act of their own volition, bodies are dislocated
from their cities and seek them out, and cities become active participants in
battles. The city is a shifting fixture, functioning almost as character. It
ÒemergesÓ and Òappears,Ó participates in battles, and recedes. It acts as the
mutual home in an area of perpetual displacement. Though often undefined in
terms of geographical location or name, the city takes on corporeal
characteristics. It is both a continuous entity with breath and body, and also
a specific vicinity. We are located, but these landscapes are not permanent. At
times even the existence of the landscape itself is called into question. The
city Òbroke its own back,Ó is Òunderground,Ó Ònotching its barks into the thick
sea,Ó and is Òjust learning to praise.Ó The city in these poems is a fluid
character, fully personified, but able to retain its shape as an architectural
Òbeing,Ó a place of habitation:
and The
Citie seemed to stand, ears broken off, cochineal sketch in
the
cold. A fragment of apnea. The two vanishing points of the citie
and
flesh and we )warred. Boys and Girles tumbling in the street
Citizens still
inhabit this standing city, but their ÒtumblingÓ is undefined. Are they warring
as the narrative suggests? Or are they embracing? Falling through a swiftly
moving city? Pouring out of doors? These actions can all exist here. This city
is not a stagnant place of tenancy, but a variable and entirely animate being
with manifold possibilities. Body and location are blurred together as their
Òtwo vanishing pointsÓ collide.
The
changeability of the city presses against the mutability of the body. Both seem
torn apart, although these Òpieces,Ó whether they are a street or an ear,
retain will and agency, even when dismembered. The sense and organ are separated out from each other: ÒIt
felt like/ pain but was not pain. I was told to keep breathing until I could
breathe again.Ó Sense makes impossible movements: ÒBefore I used my voice I
heard it.Ó Bodies are missing: Òwhere is my body, blind king?Ó and departing,
Òentire cavity of the body exiting the body.Ó The body in these poems is an
estranged but necessary component of habitation.
Just as
cities and bodies can exist as both a place of dwelling or safety and an active
rebel against its inhabitant(s), ÒcharactersÓ seem concurrently alive and dead.
This multiplicity so permeates the text through the juxtaposition of opposing
events or statements, given without a suggestion as to which is the ÒrightÓ
one, or if there even exists any correctness. Maxwell explores the pliability of ÒeventÓ and ÒstoryÓ
in these poems through repetition and shift of delicately constructed phrases
(and rephrases). The aim does not seem to be exactness, precisely, but an
allowance for each meaning to function in conjunction with the others, as in
ÒSarajevo StaccatoÓ:
Émy
cousin
lived
in that building he said, oh
I
said itÕs so elegant, no he said, he leapt
in
that building, oh I said, no, he leapt
he
said from that building.
Although the
recurring ÒnoÓ suggests inaccuracy, the recurring ÒohÓ suggests a malleability
of truth. There is precision in each of these iterations, and an exactness to
every echo. Although this conversation ends, the circularity implies
continuation. The end Òhe leaptÉfrom that buildingÓ has a certain finality in
terms of narrativity, but not in terms of structural implication. This
conversation could continue. The answer could be here, the answer could be all
of these. MaxwellÕs willingness to explore the frailty of meaning when
discussing genocidal war is startling and refreshing. Meaning does not need to
be fixed; there are many possibilities, all of which may be true.
This
multiplicity is a crucial feature of these poems, not just in terms of
coexisting incongruities, but the way in which the reader is situated within
the text. We are often relocated line by line, not allowed to quite rest in any
one space: ÒJolt (quick scrim)/of the ball leaving its pocked/socket as it
lifts/the suitcase, wing shirring/and tossing some thought, some no/this would
never.Ó Continually re-placed as the lines progress, the reader is fully
dislocated in time, a pleasing disconcertion. Because we are never with one
landscape or narrative for long, this dislodgment is familiar. The pieces do
not need to fit together linearly, but can exist in contiguous gestures.
The
bodily and geographic dislocation function as if the reader were a passenger
through corporeal forms as well as time and location. In this striking
collection of poems, passengers are everywhere and take many forms. We are
passengers through the body, through the city. And the final arrival, while not
finite, is completely satisfying because of the undeniable sense that there
will be more, that the trip is not quite finished. The last lines of this book
deny any fixed conclusion:
pendulous
quake a
never-known
in its blazing
new cup
of
wind.
more
fair than
This refusal to
close with certainty opens the completion of the book as a space of departure,
outwards. Or perhaps back into the text. With Passenger, Susan Maxwell has established
herself as a careful architect of language who creates compelling structures
that demand habitation.