- Barbara Guest
One of the most exciting young woman poets of the day, Heather Christle, is the author of two full-length poetry collections: The Difficult Farm (2009), and The Trees The Trees (2011), as well as a chapbook, The Seaside! (2010) and a third forthcoming collection What Is Amazing (2012) from Wesleyan University Press. She received her MFA from the Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and her BA from Tufts University. Her poems been anthologized in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to the Present, right between works from Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman.
from Octopus Books
THE TREES THE TREES, by Heather Christle
Christle's newest book, The Trees The Trees, is a wonderful collection of prose block poems, in which she addresses several socio-political themes, including feminism. Poet Nick Sturm has to say of the book, "The Trees The Trees is a wrecking ball covered in flowers. These poems by Heather Christle make me feel, often simultaneously, all of the following things: that I am riding a fucked-up carousal in the middle of the woods, that I am an animal pulling out my own wires, that my skin is a new kind of candy, that my brain and my heart are in a tree and that, somewhere up in that tree, they are kissing, calling each other the wrong names."
Here are some of the most overtly feminist poems in the book:
YOU ARE MY GUEST
I will call you man man man man man it is a
recipe it is not that expensive I will have you
over for dinner and I will not take your clothes
off you wear clothes like a man man you are a
tightly wound bundle when we think of the
woods the woods are the same but the rabbit
between them is different eat up your soup
little man little man man there is no food
coming later
MY ENEMY
I have a new enemy he is so good-looking here
is a photograph of him in the snow he is in the
snow and so is the photo I put it there because
I hate him and because it is always snowing in
the photograph my enemy is acting like there
are no neighbors but there are always neighbors
they just might be far away he is 100% evil
and good-looking he looks good in his parka
in the snow if you asked if would call it a
helmet all he ever does is lie he does not
breathe or move or glow he is not that kind
of man it is not that kind of snow
POEM CONSISTING ENTIRELY OF ADVICE
you must not look at what may be a man or
may be his empty car what if he asks you what
are you looking at what if you still do not know
What I love about Christle's work is that it blends the theories of feminism with the realities of her own life in a way that is almost memoiric. The bluntness and wittiness of her poetry is what makes it unique and exciting, and is certainly the quality of her writing that has led to the success of this book, despite being published by a small, independent publisher. Christle confronts heterosexuality from within it, critiquing, but also embracing it, as in "My Enemy."
To see more of the amazing Heather Christle, visit her on tumblr: http://heatherchristle.tumblr.com/ or buy one of her books at Innisfree Bookstore.
It is interesting to me that there is a consistent thread throughout the modern feminist poetry of presenting the men as liars. Anne Carson does this in "The Beauty of the Husband" when she writes, "My husband lied about everything" (34). Christle does it here in "My Enemy":
ReplyDeleteall he ever does is lie
I don't have an answer or even a fully formed thought about why this is happening. However, I think there is something more going on than women simply complaining about men not telling the truth. I think that Carson uses the lie--especially the lie of the husband who is speaking and living from the masculine and supposedly more "linear" mode--to destabilize language. I think Christle is doing the same thing. What kind of man
does not
breathe or move or glow (?)
Christle is challenging man as a subject and his language as being symbolic and identified. Relating this to Kristeva--I think these poets might be using the lie to break through the symbolic to the semiotic--to blatantly show the tension and interaction between the two.
Another consistent thread in modern feminist poetry is the juxtaposition of desire and oppression each author experiences. Robertson, Carson, and Christle are all heterosexual women who deal with, some more obviously then others, the tension of the man being their greatest oppressor, but also their greatest source of happiness and love. This seems to be a universal paradox for heterosexual women. According to Freud, people are driven by two conflicting desires: the life and death drive. Men seem to fall into both of these categories for women. Heterosexual women are attracted to men in terms of the life drive for sex and partnership, but also the death drive because men can oppress women simultaneously—creating another binary within the representation of the oppressor and oppressed. Christle presents this idea in the first two lines of here poem, “My Enemy,” when she states, “I have a new enemy/he is so good-looking.” Her two drives are already conflicted by the beginning of the poem. The poem continues in binaries with statements such as, “he is 100% evil/and good-looking.”
ReplyDeleteOverall, Robertson, Carson, and Christle all seem to deal with this conflict by switching the object and then constructing temporary agencies for the new object. Robertson and Christle especially push the constructions specific to each gender when men are eventually “enjambed.” Each simplify and complicate men, so that “he does not/breathe/or move/or glow/he is not that kind/of man/it is not that kind of snow.” I can really appreciate and respect all of these poets because I feel like they find the right balance between representing their own idiosyncratic oppressive situation, which is available to all readers, while still being honest with their sexuality and desires.