{"id":158,"date":"2014-01-12T21:54:12","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T02:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=158"},"modified":"2014-02-02T22:18:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T03:18:48","slug":"review-of-life-work-by-charlotte-mandel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"Review of Life Work by Charlotte Mandel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mandel<\/a><\/p>\n

Charlotte Mandel. Life Work. <\/i>David Robert Books. 2013. 97 pgs. $18.00<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Life Work, <\/i>Charlotte Mandel\u2019s eighth collection of poetry, is arranged into five sections, each one containing poems related either by content or form. The collection is, therefore, something like a compilation of chapbooks, and it illustrates the title\u2019s suggestion\u2014by including such a range of poems, the book does seem to represent a poet\u2019s \u201clife work.\u201d Many of the poems are written in received forms, from sonnet sequences to pantoum to ghazal. Several of the poems are elegiac; others are ekphrastic. They describe the quotidian\u2014a new mattress, an old sweater\u2014as well as the majestic, both immanent and transcendent.<\/p>\n

The first section contains several elegies to the speaker\u2019s husband, often composed as sonnets. \u201cCrossing the Calendar Bridge\u201d is a sequence of three sonnets that trace grief\u2019s evolution, eventually linking end to beginning. In a sense, it does begin at a beginning: New Year\u2019s Eve, but it is the first New Year\u2019s after her husband\u2019s death, and the speaker recalls his New Year\u2019s ritual, the recitation of a sentence which now can never again be true: \u201cLucky us, we\u2019ve earned \/ another year.\u201d By the end of this sonnet, she imagines him waiting for her with a \u201cwelcoming embrace\u201d; the next sonnet begins, \u201cI did not always welcome his embrace.\u201d So this middle of the three sonnets explores some challenges and rewards of marriage. The final sonnet of these three returns to grief, and it is the most formally intriguing of the three. In the second sonnet, the speaker had referred to the match between herself and her husband as \u201crhymes\u201d that \u201cwere true or near or simply free.\u201d The rhymes in these sonnets are as often near as they are true, and at times they border on free. In the third sonnet, the rhymes are almost never exact. As the poem nears its concluding couplet, however, its attention turns to language itself as a factor in experience. Mandel says: \u201cGet past the calendar, switch off the screen \/ stop conjugating \u2018is\u2019 as \u2018might have been.\u2019 \/\/ Yet how to tell the poem \u2018don\u2019t reminisce\u2019 \/ all moments lived are sparks to genesis.\u201d On the one hand, the speaker encourages herself to receive the present as it is rather than interpreting it as absence. Yet she also addresses a conundrum\u2014how to convey the difference between what was and what is without reminiscing. As we reach the final line, however, the rhyme\u2014reminisce\/genesis\u2014delights us. We are surprised by what the form can do, and so we pause\u2014as we would at the concluding couplet of a Shakespearean sonnet anyway, or as we would at the concluding line of any poem\u2014but here we pause to consider the truth that this rhyme forces: everything does lead to beginning, whether that is the<\/i> beginning or a<\/i> (perhaps new) beginning. \u201cSparks\u201d here is a particularly interesting noun, especially as they are not sparks from<\/i> but to <\/i>genesis. That aspect of ourselves that is life, that spark brightening for a moment before it dies away, does connect us to the beginning. The poem works in part because it leads not where we would expect, to an end, but instead it chooses to end with beginning.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll discuss only one other poem, this one written a bit more freely than a sonnet demands, yet not entirely in free verse either. \u201cFlood Washed\u201d is written in energetic syllabics and describes a snake, already dead on the sidewalk, which serves to recall an earlier snake killed by the speaker\u2019s husband. The poem is composed in couplets. In the first several, the first line consists of nine syllables while the second line consists of three. Eventually, the pattern is reduced to lines of eight and three syllables, then seven and three, then again eight and three. The speaker is attracted to the snake\u2019s beauty, linking it to creative desire: \u201cWho framed you, the visionary \/ poet asks\u2014 \/\/ from whence comes this earthly design \/ built into \/\/ matter\u2019s insistent desire: In \/ all things, form.\u201d A snake can seem oddly formless, and yet its length curls into forms as patterns of scales create forms of its skin. If not all pattern and form create beauty, beauty nevertheless requires pattern and form. In concluding with the word \u201cform,\u201d the poem itself testifies to the beauty of its own structure, and it confirms the beauty of form in much of the rest of the collection.<\/p>\n

I often find contemporary poetry written in received forms a little heavy-handed; I hear the metrical rhythms too definitely. The rhythms of Charlotte Mandel\u2019s poems are refreshingly subtle, often nearly natural. I appreciate poems written in received forms most when my recognition of the form is secondary to my appreciation of the whole, as it is throughout Life Work. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Mandel. Life Work. David Robert Books. 2013. 97 pgs. $18.00 Reviewed by Lynn Domina Life Work, Charlotte Mandel\u2019s eighth collection of poetry, is arranged into five sections, each one containing poems related either by content or form. The collection is, therefore, something like a compilation of chapbooks, and it illustrates the title\u2019s suggestion\u2014by including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}