CAN SHE REALLY, as is said, have written this in a day? I can just barely imagine writing a 120-page poem on a day on which one had absolutely nothing else to do, but on a day on which one was minding two children, one in diapers, running to the post office, making the coffee, getting food on the table, and so on?
I have no idea how she did it, but somehow she did, creating a high-water mark for the art of making literature out of the dailiness of the day, 56 years after the grandparent of them all, Ulysses, and 41 years before a subsequent high-water mark, Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport. (Let's throw in Knausgaard for good measure).
As with Joyce, Ellmann, and Knausgaard, memory provides an important dimension. Whatever is occurring in the moment occurs in the context of remembering, the here and now resonating with the there and then--a there and then that in Mayer's case intersects with a notable place and time in American poetry once you realize that the Ted, Alice, Clark, and Joe whose names keep popping up are surnamed Berrigan, Notley, Coolidge, and Brainard. The dimension of time turns routine into a universe.
I can't imagine anyone getting as far as Part Two and not falling in love with this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment