Review
Vauxhall by Catherine Daly
Shearsman Books, 2008
Reviewed by Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom
Vauxhall was the name of a pleasure garden in London that was incredibly popular during much of the 17th through 19th centuries. Catherine Daly structured her seventh poetry collection like a literary pleasure garden, with long poems organized under broad themes, most with several subsections. For instance, the second poem is entitled "Vessels: Some Forms" and there are three numbered sections, "Glass Glasses or Goblets," "Tumblers and Cups," and "Decanters."
Other poems follow this pattern but without the numbered sections; for instance, the third poem, "Peace," includes a large number of brief, playfully titled sections such as "Piece" and "Cease/Keats." This is language poetry, so wordplay is in abundance and there is no strong lyric or narrative voice, but there is the presence of a voice that acts as curator, cataloging items, both concrete and abstract -- flora, fauna and ephemera -- and occasionally commenting on them. "I have an object fetish," the narrator tells us in "Nightingale Girl," a subsection of "Big Book of Birds."
I'll confess that language poetry is not usually my cup of tea. And I find the voice in these poems most compelling when something of the personal or philosophical breaks through and speaks directly to the reader, instances which, due to their novelty, come to seem pleasantly obscene. My favorite was this, in "The Study of Paradise", in which the speaker is quoting a former teacher, a nun:
You must repeat the same life within one life and apply an evolving taxonomy of mysticism of experience to it, she probably meant, revising Nietzsche to suck all the joy out of it. The concrete block walls of her third grade classroom, corner and shadow, the texture of asbestos ceiling tiles: if pleasure and attainment are ineffable, certainly this is the great mystery; eschatology; not the Sasquatch Leonard Nimoy's been In Search of...
I savored that digression and wish there were more of its kind in here, especially in place of sections that, as much fun as they are visually, function simply as lists of things, like varieties of candy:
jelly jolly skittles sour trolli belly rancher skittles strawberry sour bite peachies puffs crawlers tropicos chewy runts spree original minichewy gummi lifesaver gummy runts chewy spree spree savers gummi bears gobstopper gobstopper shock tarts minishocktarts bottlecaps oompas tart'n gummy chewy green apple fruit chews warheads tinys sweet tarts sweet tarts sweet tarts star burst sour warheads jujy fruits jujubes now and later now and later dots lemonhead classic zours zours nerds nerds hot tamales mike and ike good n' plenty good n' fruity twizzlers jum-blo fun dip charleston chew breakers wafer
It's true there is reading to be done between lines like those, but there are other times in the collection when the payoff is greater, and so at times like these it seems best to just go along for the ride.
But cups of tea (and sugar) aside, Daly writes language poetry very well, and I have no desire to ask her to write a different sort of poem to suit my personal tastes. I can appreciate the sparkle and satisfaction of her wordplay when she's at the height of her game, as she often is throughout this collection; for instance, in the lovely "Ibis," another section of "Big Book of Birds."
decurved, afoul threskia, bill a little scythe sensitive, to search gwe gwe, scarlet blown in from Africa accidental croo, croo, white stylized daughters pink wading in sacred, burned
Catherine Daly lives in Los Angeles, and is the author of seven books of poetry. Her poem “Bee Superstitions” appears in the current issue of Melusine.
