Poetry chapbook by Karen Rigby [preorder]
Forthcoming September 2008 from Finishing Line Press
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .Karen Rigby’s second chapbook, Savage Machinery, invokes characters as diverse as the biblical Eve, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O’Keeffe, but perhaps the thread with which these sixteen poems are sewn together can best be understood through Rigby’s echo of the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard: “there are rooms behind / the ones you know.” Both Eluard and Rigby suggest there is a familiar but intangible reality worthy of illumination through poetry, and a glimpse into this other world is the gift of Savage Machinery. Forthcoming in September of 2008 from Finishing Line Press, Savage Machinery explores an apparent but veneered world of sleep, sexuality, invention, religious ceremony, and mid-century stagnation. This is a world where an autoerotic and an onion receive equal attention by the deliberate but elusive language of Rigby, who sees “The hand as a salt cellar, a compass, / a pharmacy / for the struck mouth.” The world of Savage Machinery is a world that exists below the surface of this one, and one that Rigby draws forward for the reader with control and precision.
. . . . .As with her 2004 chapbook Festival Bone (from Adastra Press), Rigby’s primary trope in Savage Machinery is the lives of women; here, in her second chapbook, she explores how women historically have presented femininity and how men observe it. In the collection’s initial poem, “Bathing in the Burned House,” men “long to be / the sky above the woman’s head.” Later, “Edward Hopper’s Women” describes “the curve / of their haunches / blazing in the first light, the beds / unmade, their lovers missing / from the frame.” The poems seek a delicate space that is neither a defense of women or men, but rather an adroit commentary on the mystery of sight. In “Song for the Onion,” the speaker begs, “Let me admire / her reckless theatre.” There is desperation but also an awareness of the possibility of deception in this sentiment that colors much of the gendered discourse in Savage Machinery.
. . . . .Rigby’s second chapbook slides naturally into ekphrasis as Rigby questions the “savage machinery” of the body and its intentions as it “speed[s] into sleep.” The most risky and perhaps the most deftly executed exploration of this subject is a later poem in the chapbook, “The Story of Adam and Eve.” Written after the visual art of the Boucicaut Master, Rigby’s poem works both as a sequence and as a canvas for word and white space:
. . . . . . . . . . . . .Think of the parchmenter scraping
. . . . . . . . . . . . .his curved blade
. . . . . . . . . . . . .cutting double-leaves. . . soaked in lime
. . . . . . . . . . . . .Think of the calligrapher
. . . . . . . . . . . . .gesso. . . .lamp-black. . .oak gall. . .mineral pigments
. . . . . . . . . . . . .the book revealing
. . . . . . . . . . . . .what bereft means: the field whelmed with salt
. . . . . . . . . . . . .crows echoing. . . . . . . . their brothers the songbirds
. . . . . . . . . . . . .a city of exiles given to powdered iron.
“The Story of Adam and Eve” places as parallels the creation of humankind and the creation of art. This framework complements the languages of gender, nature, and domesticity that provide subtle tensions throughout Savage Machinery.
. . . . .If Savage Machinery has a flaw, perhaps it is that at times, Rigby’s use of image and metaphor is so controlled that it verges on the deliberate. This is perhaps most true of the chapbook’s initial poem, “Bathing in the Burned House,” in which the brief, staccato opening sentences seem too heavy compared to the whimsical language of “a child’s / shoe-box diorama” and “the clawfoot tub.” Later—in a lovely moment—women envy the freedom of water, but then “Tease their husbands, saying church drives / and dry cleaning trips are white lies.” For this reader, this moment in the poem verges on the type of intentionality that can change a discussion of women in poetry into inevitable rhetoric. These are sentiments completely absent from the later subtlety of Savage Machinery. Rigby’s language loosens as the collection unfolds, allowing the reader room to explore each poem on its own terms, as necessary collisions of language and image rather than as measured argument.
. . . . .Savage Machinery is a concise yet beautiful example of Karen Rigby’s ability to capture with crystalline precision what is simultaneously visible and yet unknown. The vigor with which she recurrently approaches both the physical and the ethereal gives much of the chapbook a nearly visceral energy. Most admirably, the voice that leads the reader through Savage Machinery is unwaveringly original and fresh—a voice that will hopefully continue to grow into future books.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Review Editor for OT!M.
Forthcoming September 2008 from Finishing Line Press
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .Karen Rigby’s second chapbook, Savage Machinery, invokes characters as diverse as the biblical Eve, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O’Keeffe, but perhaps the thread with which these sixteen poems are sewn together can best be understood through Rigby’s echo of the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard: “there are rooms behind / the ones you know.” Both Eluard and Rigby suggest there is a familiar but intangible reality worthy of illumination through poetry, and a glimpse into this other world is the gift of Savage Machinery. Forthcoming in September of 2008 from Finishing Line Press, Savage Machinery explores an apparent but veneered world of sleep, sexuality, invention, religious ceremony, and mid-century stagnation. This is a world where an autoerotic and an onion receive equal attention by the deliberate but elusive language of Rigby, who sees “The hand as a salt cellar, a compass, / a pharmacy / for the struck mouth.” The world of Savage Machinery is a world that exists below the surface of this one, and one that Rigby draws forward for the reader with control and precision.. . . . .As with her 2004 chapbook Festival Bone (from Adastra Press), Rigby’s primary trope in Savage Machinery is the lives of women; here, in her second chapbook, she explores how women historically have presented femininity and how men observe it. In the collection’s initial poem, “Bathing in the Burned House,” men “long to be / the sky above the woman’s head.” Later, “Edward Hopper’s Women” describes “the curve / of their haunches / blazing in the first light, the beds / unmade, their lovers missing / from the frame.” The poems seek a delicate space that is neither a defense of women or men, but rather an adroit commentary on the mystery of sight. In “Song for the Onion,” the speaker begs, “Let me admire / her reckless theatre.” There is desperation but also an awareness of the possibility of deception in this sentiment that colors much of the gendered discourse in Savage Machinery.
. . . . .Rigby’s second chapbook slides naturally into ekphrasis as Rigby questions the “savage machinery” of the body and its intentions as it “speed[s] into sleep.” The most risky and perhaps the most deftly executed exploration of this subject is a later poem in the chapbook, “The Story of Adam and Eve.” Written after the visual art of the Boucicaut Master, Rigby’s poem works both as a sequence and as a canvas for word and white space:
. . . . . . . . . . . . .Think of the parchmenter scraping
. . . . . . . . . . . . .his curved blade
. . . . . . . . . . . . .cutting double-leaves. . . soaked in lime
. . . . . . . . . . . . .Think of the calligrapher
. . . . . . . . . . . . .gesso. . . .lamp-black. . .oak gall. . .mineral pigments
. . . . . . . . . . . . .the book revealing
. . . . . . . . . . . . .what bereft means: the field whelmed with salt
. . . . . . . . . . . . .crows echoing. . . . . . . . their brothers the songbirds
. . . . . . . . . . . . .a city of exiles given to powdered iron.
“The Story of Adam and Eve” places as parallels the creation of humankind and the creation of art. This framework complements the languages of gender, nature, and domesticity that provide subtle tensions throughout Savage Machinery.
. . . . .If Savage Machinery has a flaw, perhaps it is that at times, Rigby’s use of image and metaphor is so controlled that it verges on the deliberate. This is perhaps most true of the chapbook’s initial poem, “Bathing in the Burned House,” in which the brief, staccato opening sentences seem too heavy compared to the whimsical language of “a child’s / shoe-box diorama” and “the clawfoot tub.” Later—in a lovely moment—women envy the freedom of water, but then “Tease their husbands, saying church drives / and dry cleaning trips are white lies.” For this reader, this moment in the poem verges on the type of intentionality that can change a discussion of women in poetry into inevitable rhetoric. These are sentiments completely absent from the later subtlety of Savage Machinery. Rigby’s language loosens as the collection unfolds, allowing the reader room to explore each poem on its own terms, as necessary collisions of language and image rather than as measured argument.
. . . . .Savage Machinery is a concise yet beautiful example of Karen Rigby’s ability to capture with crystalline precision what is simultaneously visible and yet unknown. The vigor with which she recurrently approaches both the physical and the ethereal gives much of the chapbook a nearly visceral energy. Most admirably, the voice that leads the reader through Savage Machinery is unwaveringly original and fresh—a voice that will hopefully continue to grow into future books.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Review Editor for OT!M.
