{"id":666,"date":"2020-05-29T18:29:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T22:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=666"},"modified":"2020-05-29T18:29:49","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T22:29:49","slug":"review-of-how-the-universe-is-made-by-stephanie-strickland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=666","title":{"rendered":"Review of How the Universe is Made by Stephanie Strickland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Stephanie Strickland. How the Universe Is Made: Poems New and Selected, 1985-2019. <\/em>Ahsahta Press, 2019. 293 pgs. $21.00. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewing a collected or selected volume of poetry is always a challenge. There\u2019s so much to say in response to decades of any author\u2019s work, which has inevitably changed through those decades, in response to events in the writer\u2019s own life, in response to or reaction against political and social changes as well as aesthetic developments in literature and other arts. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Stephanie Strickland\u2019s newest collection, How the Universe Is Made: Poems New and Selected, 1985-2019, <\/em>is particularly challenging to evaluate within the short space of a review because her work has grown uniquely experimental. She has written\u2014or built, or designed\u2014poems for many new media platforms, viewable online as websites with plug-ins like Adobe Shockwave or Flash, relying on code generated lines, on CDs, or with PowerPoint slides. Yet she simultaneously pays homage to canonical writers such as Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville (who were certainly experimental in their own times). Strickland\u2019s body of knowledge is astonishing, for she incorporates material from virtually every academic discipline as she explores the coded nature of language and its role in humanity\u2019s search for meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the most prominent figures throughout How the Universe Is Made <\/em>is French philosopher, activist, and mystic Simone Weil. Born into a non-observant Jewish family in 1909, Weil explored the teachings and literatures of several religious traditions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, before finding her eventual spiritual home within Catholicism; she was likely baptized shortly before her death in 1943. Weil\u2019s daily life, however, was marked at least as much by her engagement with leftists political movements as it was by her mystical spirituality. These factors and others have made her an attractive as well as controversial figure for many groups of people during the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many of the poems, Strickland references Weil\u2019s biography, though without directly explaining the details or slipping into a pedagogical tone. In several, Strickland incorporates quotations from Weil\u2019s work and from others writing about her. Whether quoting or relying on her own language, Strickland\u2019s work is elliptical, always hinting toward its subject, circling around it, exploring its facets without ever insisting that the reader concur. These lines are poetic responses to Weil, after all, not analyses or apologetics. Poetry compresses language, relying on attentive readers to make their own connections and draw their own conclusions. Here is \u201cAgent,\u201d a poem that occurs early in the selections from \u201cThe Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you say her?\n\t\tSimone. Say Simone.\nBut she signs \nher letters, Your affectionate\nson, Simon\u2014\n\n\t\tshe\u2019s divided,\n\t\talways going half-way,\n\t\ta double agent.\n\nHow do you say Weil?\n\n\t\tNot Vile, not the German,\n\t\talthough I would be pleased\n\t\tto call her Miss Because,\n\n\t\tbut as the family said it,\n\t\tVyay, Vey, an oversound\n\t\tof woe, of one\n\n\t\twho waits, keeps vigil.\n\t\tTo us, a way away,\n\t\tunavailing.\n\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
On one level, this poem is simply an exploration of a common conundrum\u2014how do you pronounce \u201cWeil\u201d? Yet each of the pronunciations encapsulates meaning, and the words refer to aspects of her life\u2014her German heritage, her desire to serve as an agent for the French resistance. She is not the \u201cVile\u201d of German behavior during the 1930\u2019s, but lest the poem become too predictably or simply anti-Nazi, Strickland introduces a pun, \u201cVey, <\/em>an oversound \/ of woe,\u201d oy vey, oy veh, the Yiddish expression whose use in American popular culture has become almost a parody of Jewish life. The puns continue, though more seriously, in the final stanza, wherein \u201cWeil,\u201d having become \u201cVey,\u201d now becomes \u201cway,\u201d \u201ca way <\/em>away. A way for whom, we might ask, and away from what? The speaker says, \u201cTo us,\u201d meaning perhaps herself and all readers, an anglicized pronunciation of Weil, a deep allusion also, perhaps, to Weil\u2019s conversion to Christianity, as Jesus described himself as \u201cthe way.\u201d And then we have the final line, the single word, \u201cunavailing,\u201d itself containing \u201cWeil\u201d pronounced in its center. \u201cHow do you say her?\u201d the poem asks in its opening line. By the time we reach the end, we\u2019ve been instructed in the proper pronunciation, but we\u2019ve also been led astray, as much \u201caway\u201d as toward Weil, for she seems no more knowable here at the end than she was at the beginning. We can name her, but naming does not lead to possessing her, regardless of what the theologians or psychologists claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of poems in the middle of this section appear to be spoken in Weil\u2019s voice\u2014though context is important, for nothing in the poems themselves overtly reveals this. \u201cJustice\u201d contains statements consistent with Weil\u2019s theology, a view of God as absent from the matter of creation that some would find uncomfortable, even heretical. Yet the God portrayed here is attractive, even seductive:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As justice is to disregard your strength in an unequal\n\trelationship and to treat the other\n\tin every detail, even intonation, posture, exactly\n\nas an equal:\n\tso God\n\nall-powerful, does not exert power; God waits like a beggar\n\tfor us, made equal, Might drawn\n\tback\n\nthat the world\n\tbe\u2014\n\nAs justice: so God, secretly\n\tpresent, an opening in us that can move, consent, bond us\n\tforever,\n\nbut not\n\tappearing\u2014appearing absent; except\n\tfor how a thing can be beautiful, constrained\n\nto its nature, how that\n\tsnares us. \n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
This poem is particularly philosophical and daring in its determination to take such an abstract concept as justice as its subject matter, but I am most attracted to its skillful craft. The poem\u2019s arrangement on the page, along with its punctuation, encourages readers to slow down, to consider its ideas as well as its words. Notice how Strickland uses the line to both repeat and disguise her repetition as the logical sequence of the sentence shifts from premise to conclusion. \u201cAs justice,\u201d the poem begins, leading to a similar phrase in the second stanza: \u201cas an equal: \/ so God.\u201d Immediately after the midpoint, parts of these phrases appear again, this time in a single line so that they stand out less obviously: \u201cAs justice: so God, secretly.\u201d In case we leap ahead too confidently, the next stanza begins with a contradiction and paradox: \u201cbut not \/ appearing\u2014appearing absent.\u201d The poem concludes suddenly, imitating the quick unexpected act contained in the phrase, \u201csnares us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other reviewers will undoubtedly focus on the mathematical and technological content of How the Universe Is Made, <\/em>for which I am glad. This collection is one that will elicit multiple responses, for it offers multiple points of entry. Its variety is among its strengths, yet its variety is also consistent with its material and approach, an exploration of all that which, like the universe, can never be fully known.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephanie Strickland. How the Universe Is Made: Poems New and Selected, 1985-2019. Ahsahta Press, 2019. 293 pgs. $21.00. Reviewing a collected or selected volume of poetry is always a challenge. There\u2019s so much to say in response to decades of any author\u2019s work, which has inevitably changed through those decades, in response to events in […]<\/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":[34,35],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek","tag-how-the-universe-is-made","tag-stephanie-strickland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","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=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}