Revolver by Robyn Schiff

University of Iowa Press, 2008

Reviewed by David Carillo

Consider the poem “de la Rue’s Envelope Machine” in Robyn Schiff’s second book of poems Revolver. As in most of the poems in this book, in Envelope Machine we are introduced via the title to what could be described as a specific object. Many of the poems here are titled after displays at the Great Exhibition (also known as The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations or the Crystal Palace Exhibition) that took place in Hyde Park, London, England from May 1 to October 15, 1851.

De la Rue’s envelope machine was one such wonder on display and at that time it represented the very latest and greatest in envelope folding technology. The poem begins with an explanation of its powers:

“With an output of twenty-seven hundred

envelopes an hour

where prior but

three thousand were made a day…..”

Thus the envelope machine (at that time) represented the “future” of envelope making. But the poem does not rest there and very quickly moves to consider some of the implications, some minor and more pressing, some directly and others tangentially related to this machine:

three thousand were made a day, cry

when you consider the empty envelopes piled

on each of our desks it is our

responsibility to load and

send, inserting therein a folded note

in an action that

reverses the

process of the envelope stock

itself having once been inserted flat into

the machine bed and exiting

folded in the automation of

the same paper-folding mystery of

which it is said some

performers snap

jerking, flapping birds from sheets of

paper in such a glare of footlights, that folding

this quickly along pre-laid creases

appears to be the instantaneous

transformation of matter. A toy,

an ornament, one thousand cranes

folded in a plea for longevity by she

afflicted with the “atom bomb

disease”

And so the poem proceeds from 2700 envelopes an hour to the paper cranes folded in order to rid the body of radiation poisoning. This motion, this movement from one idea, place, or moment to the next is one of the defining characteristics of the poems in Revolver. But in this sequence, we also see one of Revolver’s most significant characteristics: that of constellation, the rich connections among ideas, images and language that Schiff draws upon to facilitate such movement.

For instance, Envelope Machine, has within it the folding of envelopes, the paper cranes and bed sheets of the radiation sick, and the hands of the dead; the folding done by “master folders” once used to authenticate privileged communications from kings to subjects; the folding of the metal in the construction of the king’s sword, and “His sword is origami, as / swords are. Its hammered folds have the / audacity never to unfold / an envelope with no opening that / holds your life.”

And there are tissue-paper roses “lightweight as the man- / ifold paper / once used to make carbon copies,” U.S. Dollar Bill folding: paper diamond rings, paper bow ties, and eventually the paper currency printed today by De La Rue for various nations worldwide, and, in the particular instance Schiff finishes with, the twenty-seven 747s full of paper currency printed for and flown to Iraq.

The status of the envelope machine as an object on display persists when one considers it as similarly on display as the object of the poem itself. Likewise, many of these poems place on display their own object, for instance “The Singer Sewing Machine,” “McCormick’s Reaper,” and “Silverware, by J.A. Henckels.” This concept creates a sense of “fixedness” for these things; removed from the world, cut off from time and space. This notion is significant, as it works in opposition to the movement and connectedness Schiff creates in the poems themselves.

And these poems find a compelling sense of urgency in that opposition. Schiff doesn’t seem motivated to simply prove the interconnectedness exists. Instead, she strains to articulate as much of that interconnectedness as the work will allow. The lushness of movement and patterns in her work show, I think, just how successful Schiff is, but then again, they also intimate how daunting and near impossible such a task is.

One of the most compelling challenges of Revolver is the negotiation of such shifts in subject, tone, and language in relation to the relative stability of the initial subject. And not just for the reader, but seemingly for the poet herself. Maybe it’s how quickly, how substantially the universe Schiff seems intent on cataloging expands, potentiality upon potentiality, complexity upon complexity.

I get the sense that Schiff understands all too well the complexity of her endeavor. After all not every poem is an object from 1851, there is “Lustron, The House America Has Been Waiting For,” “H5N1,” “Project Paperclip,” and “Heroic Couplet.” There are other things to consider. And while an argument can be made, even for the isolated “thingness” of Couplet or Paperclip, I think that these poems, the subjects of which have space (at least temporally) between them and the Great Exhibition offer the reader some great insight into the uncertainty of this artistic challenge.

In “Project Paperclip” (in reference to Operation Paperclip, the classified recruitment of former Nazi scientists into the American space program after V.E. Day), “confessions fail

to retract, lingering

like lines of poems Chinese woodworkers once

carved into joinery of portable furnishings

to guide reassembly when the

maid charged with dismantling chairs

in the rhododendron garden is called away

before having time to reconstruct

them in the fragrant orchard, leaving lines intended

to lead the front legs into the foreground

of the seat unresolved—The Universe is—

and—Time is—never to interlock

with Vast and Eternal”

Herein lies at least one more challenge for the poet: despite the best efforts of the designers to ensure that everything lines up, the connection won’t always be made, even with such obvious observations as “The Universe is Vast,” or because of that.

Likewise in the sparest poem of the book, the highly confessional “Heroic Couplet,” we come upon the narrator with keys, but having rung the bell

…..so as to be received

by you

perceived location

actual location

Amidst such stability there is still a swirling, amidst such lush poems, there might still be space. This seems to me one of the reasons to write poetry in the first place.