{"id":444,"date":"2017-01-29T15:21:22","date_gmt":"2017-01-29T20:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=444"},"modified":"2017-01-29T15:21:22","modified_gmt":"2017-01-29T20:21:22","slug":"review-of-show-time-at-the-ministry-of-lost-causes-by-cheryl-dumesnil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=444","title":{"rendered":"Review of Show Time at the Ministry of Lost Causes by Cheryl Dumesnil"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Cheryl Dumesnil. Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes. <\/em>University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. 90 pgs. $15.95.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Let me just say right off the bat that Cheryl Dumesnil\u2019s Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes <\/em>is among my favorite collections from the last few years. I\u2019ve been thinking about why that is, and this is what I\u2019ve come to: the writer\u2019s confidence in her voice. These poems are tight but accessible. Every word pulls its weight\u2014so often in less accomplished poems, the language is hesitant, characterized by a few too many modifiers and imprecise verbs that flatten the lines. Dumesnil\u2019s poems, in contrast, are pleasurable, occasionally because they\u2019re overtly fun and funny, but more often because they present experience exactly and concisely. It\u2019s not just their content but their aesthetics that reward the reader.<\/p>\n

Most often, these poems are composed in couplets, a particularly rigorous form because the abundant white space highlights lax writing. Poems written in couplets can be spare, reinforcing their stark appearance, or they can be almost hyperbolically rich, in ironic contrast to their appearance on the page, but it\u2019s difficult for them to succeed at any point between. Poets can get away with more in long dense stanzas than they can in briefer stanzas that will never be mistaken for paragraphs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNotes to Myself on the Morning after His Birth,\u201d for example, gestures toward the catalogue, but the items it refers to are developed so fully through imagery and implied metaphor that it quickly surpasses the expectations of that form. Having just given birth, the speaker hopes to remember everything, what it felt like to notice her son\u2019s skin, breath, aroma for the first time. She captures that paradoxical combination of awe and loss that occurs so frequently to parents:<\/p>\n

\u2026his body\u2019s
\nplumpness in the first hours,<\/p>\n

like a cake\u2019s perfect rise held only
\nfor a moment, as if on the breath<\/p>\n

of god before the exhale\u2014you will
\nnever get that back. Nor will it ever<\/p>\n

leave you.<\/p>\n

Although she will witness the miracle of her son\u2019s breathing over and over again, she will never again be quite as stunned by the experience. The structure of this poem enhances the reader\u2019s experience, partly because the couplets seem to float on the whiteness of the page, but also through the frequent enjambment which encourages the reader to hesitate, wondering if the meaning of the line\u00a0 will shift after the break. In the excerpt above, the enjambment sometimes reproduces the meaning of the sentence, as in \u201cheld only \/ for a moment\u201d where the reader pauses just as the breath is held briefly at its peak. The next line break accomplishes something similar, the baby\u2019s breathing held \u201cas if on the breath \/\/ of god\u2026\u201d Dumesnil emphasizes the subject of these lines\u2014breathing\u2014by breaking the line and stanza after \u201cbreath,\u201d separating that phrase briefly from its object, \u201cof god,\u201d a phrase that heightens the significance of the infant\u2019s breathing to the universally sacred. Then, the next break works differently: \u201cyou will \/ never get that back.\u201d Initially, \u201cyou will\u201d seems to gesture toward a positive accomplishment, and it is only as the next line begins that we realize the grammatical move into future tense signifies loss. But not complete loss\u2014although the speaker will never again experience this awe in exactly the same way, the subsequent line confirms that she will always remember it.<\/p>\n

The most poignant lines occur a few stanzas later, as the speaker begins to understand how radically her life has changed: \u201cMama, he warned, \/ you have signed on to witness \/ \/ a daily parade of exquisite \/ losses.\u201d Parenting includes many experiences beyond this witness, but it never occurs entirely apart from this witness.<\/p>\n

Throughout this collection, the speaker pays close attention to the world. In \u201cThe Flock,\u201d for instance, Dumesnil asks, \u201cIf a house sparrow arrives on my sill, \/ sprig of language pinched in her beak, who am I \/ \/ to tell her no?\u201d The \u201csprig of language\u201d is one of the most evocative metaphors in the book, exploiting the habit of birds to carry literal sprigs in their beaks, juxtaposing that with the patterns of birdsong to accomplish some of the tasks of language, while also suggesting a closer relationship between humans and other animals than the characterization of humans as language-using animals would suggest. This poem concludes with imagery that indicates life is fundamentally paradoxical, that wishing it otherwise is a futile even if understandable desire: \u201cThe window-stunned robin who hunkered \/\/ on my deck for hours\u2014that she flew away meant \/ one thing, that she left a red stain meant another.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poems I\u2019ve discussed are thoughtful and thought provoking. I said, though, that some of Dumesnil\u2019s poems are actively amusing, so if you\u2019re looking for humor, be sure to read the genuinely funny (yet also poignant) eight-part \u201cTampons: A Memoir.\u201d It encapsulates the experiences many of us have shared\u2014so many of us in fact that I\u2019m tempted to edit an anthology called Feminine Hygiene. <\/em><\/p>\n

The control Dumesnil exhibits in the craft of each poem extends to the entire collection. It\u2019s tone and content are nicely balanced between the internal and the external, the personal and the social, the serious and the lighthearted. I\u2019m grateful I live in a world where this collection can exist.<\/p>\n

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Cheryl Dumesnil. Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. 90 pgs. $15.95. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Let me just say right off the bat that Cheryl Dumesnil\u2019s Showtime at the Ministry of Lost Causes is among my favorite collections from the last few years. I\u2019ve been thinking about why that […]<\/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-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","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=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}