{"id":418,"date":"2016-08-18T22:32:37","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T02:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2016-08-18T22:32:37","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T02:32:37","slug":"review-of-cause-for-concern-and-family-resemblances-by-carrie-shipers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"Review of Cause for Concern and Family Resemblances by Carrie Shipers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shipers<\/a>Carrie Shipers. Cause for Concern. <\/em>Able Muse Press, 2015. 84 pgs. $18.95<\/p>\n

Carrie Shipers. Family Resemblances. <\/em>University of New Mexico Press, 2016. 70 pgs. $17.95<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Carrie Shipers\u2019 second and third collections of poetry appeared within a few months of each other, and I read them within a few days of each other. Stylistically, the poems in the two collections are similar\u2014most careful readers would with reasonable confidence identify them as composed by the same author\u2014but they differ in theme and tone. The first, Cause for Concern, <\/em>explores Shipers\u2019 experience as primary caregiver for her husband as he recovered from kidney surgery, while Family Resemblances <\/em>includes a broader range of material, though many of the poems examine the speaker\u2019s position within her family of origin. In both collections, the poems rely on implicit or explicit narrative, comparatively even line lengths\u2014though the lines nevertheless contribute substantially to the rhythmic interest\u2014and language that is interesting yet direct. Both collections include a series of poems scattered throughout\u2014in Cause for Concern <\/em>it\u2019s a sequence of haunting dog poems, and in Family Resemblances <\/em>it\u2019s a sequence of poems narrated by \u201cThe Woman Who Can\u2019t Forget\u201d (one of which was recently featured on\u00a0Verse Daily<\/a>)\u2014that function as commentary on the poems that surround them. Throughout the collections, the speaker\u2019s reliability is provocatively questionable, but her character is also reassuringly familiar. Like it or not, we\u2019ve all been this speaker.<\/p>\n

\"Shipers<\/a>Despite the often somber content, the poems do contain some humor. \u201cField Guide,\u201d for example, from Family Resemblances, <\/em>reveals how the certainties of a relationship can become both less certain and more interesting: \u201cShe married him for what he knew\u2014 \/ names of trees, animals, how to hot wire \/ his Mercury\u2026\u201d She is gullible, however, or na\u00efve, or both: \u201cThey had three kids before \/ she caught on.\u201d Shipers delays the reader\u2019s gratification for a few lines\u2014\u201ccaught on\u201d to what? Revealing the answer to that question, Shipers shifts from the names of birds to other names: \u201cDid he make up socket wrench? Phillips head?\u201d <\/em>The husband has been answering all along, but his responses have included more fantasy than fact. The stanza breaks here, at approximately the 2\/3 point, and the beginning of stanza two becomes more serious. The speaker also fantasizes,<\/p>\n

\u2026by pretending
\nto know what she only hoped, each time hoping
\nhe\u2019d catch her out so she could tell the truth:
\nI\u2019m scared too. <\/em><\/p>\n

Telling the truth often is a relief, and the truth the speaker is able to acknowledge demonstrates Shipers\u2019 skill in exploiting an anecdote to reveal the poem\u2019s own deeper truth. By its end, the poem circles back to its beginning, with the speaker asking about a bird and her husband stating, \u201cThree-toed warbler.\u201d <\/em>What began years earlier as curiosity and play has grown into ritual, a practice that in its simplicity sustains the relationship. The poem circles back to its beginning, but that beginning has acquired more significance. Looping back this way, tying the poem\u2019s final image to its first, is a common strategy that, in successful poems, redefines the opening. Through these twenty-three lines, readers understand how the speaker has grown through decades.<\/p>\n

The primary factor in the success of \u201cField Guide\u201d is its structure. But Shipers is also skilled in other areas of poetic craft\u2014choices made at the level of word and line to enhance rhythm and image. Although the poems are most often free verse, the lines are informed by English poetry\u2019s iambic history; they are not shackled by a compulsive adherence to regular meter, but the echo of meter is suggestively pleasant. Here is the last couplet of \u201cAppetite,\u201d a disturbing response to the tale of Hansel and Gretel: \u201cAnd while I talk I\u2019ll dish up supper\u2014black pudding, \/ potatoes, a roast as sweet as suckling pig.\u201d The first of the lines begins with three iambic feet which are interrupted with syllables \u201cup supper\u201d that include an internal rhyme, with the \u201cp\u201d repeated two syllables later and then repeated again at the beginning of the second line. Following \u201cpotatoes,\u201d the final line returns to an iambic meter, emphasized again with alliteration and assonance. Other lines adopt similar strategies, and they are able to do so because of Shipers\u2019 reliance on concrete, often monosyllabic vocabulary. The creepiness of this poem\u2019s content is ironically contradicted by its pleasing music.<\/p>\n

The poems in Cause for Concern <\/em>are also memorable for their concrete imagery\u2014one would hope, of course, that poems describing sick and wounded bodies would be concrete. The opening poem, \u201cWound Assessment,\u201d alternates between references to Doubting Thomas, as he\u2019s often called, reaching into Christ\u2019s wounded side, and descriptions of the speaker changing the dressing on her husband\u2019s surgical wound. The speaker here isn\u2019t an idealized nurse but an afraid and resentful young wife. Everything begins to signify her husband\u2019s illness, from scissors to her dining room table. Her husband\u2019s wound is as obvious as Christ\u2019s, but the speaker\u2019s wound is as invisible as either doubt or belief. The poem succeeds, like \u201cField Guide\u201d which I discussed above, in part because of its structure, the references to Thomas woven throughout, and also because of the language itself, particularly the verbs.<\/p>\n

Both of these books are provocative. In Cause for Concern, <\/em>the speaker acknowledges unattractive, if understandable, traits. Some readers will empathize with her response; others will not. As in fiction, it\u2019s much more difficult to write well of an unsympathetic speaker than of an attractive one. These poems raise ethical questions, not only about marriage and the care we owe each other, but also about the responsibility of the writer, which must include a commitment to truth, especially when it\u2019s a truth, like resentment of a spouse\u2019s suffering, we would rather not acknowledge. The speaker in Family Resemblances <\/em>is generally more sympathetic, but the family dynamics explored are nevertheless also often troubling. We could say the same about many poems, of course, including many badly written ones. The content of Shipers\u2019 poems is interesting, but it\u2019s her craft that\u2019s most admirable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carrie Shipers. Cause for Concern. Able Muse Press, 2015. 84 pgs. $18.95 Carrie Shipers. Family Resemblances. University of New Mexico Press, 2016. 70 pgs. $17.95 Reviewed by Lynn Domina Carrie Shipers\u2019 second and third collections of poetry appeared within a few months of each other, and I read them within a few days of each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","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=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}