Plot
Claudia Rankine
Grove Press Poetry Series
$13.00 / 80 pages / ISBN 080213792
Plot, Claudia Rankine's third collection of poetry, does indeed
have one. The book is divided into nine sections and an afterword
which directly correspond to the nine months of pregnancy: in this
case, the first pregnancy of an artist named Liv and her husband Erland,
the pregnancy which will produce a boy his parents refer to in utero
as Ersatz. The fact that the child is named after artificiality gives
a strong sense of the book's playful and philosophical meanderings,
its concern with the existential questions (Is the separate being
growing inside of me part of myself? What is my self now that it contains
another? Have I become a part of the child?) that new mothers face.
Rankine is a sophisticated and innovative writer whose intelligence
is in evidence on every page, and Plot bears a definite resemblance
to her previous books in its use of multiple voices, allusions to
other avant-garde writers (in Plot, both Virginia Woolf and
Lyn Hejinian), and varied experiments in form. Plot can be
sometimes dense reading, but it is helpful to keep the chronology
of a pregnancy in mind, so that one understands that the doubt of
the first few months ("If the floor muscle gives way, bitter
and fibrous, and the bluing cervix turns shades of gray, who will
be no more than a moan, little person about whom?") gives way
to the preoccupation with the changed body in the second trimester
("A reflection unclotted (she decides) is a low-zippered hue,
a bare midriff against the newly dug slow surge") and the urge
to know what's coming next, the impatience and distraction ("enormous
stillness hum of the hot-water heater trace of a siren" ) as
one approaches the due date. The afterword, which is written in the
voice of the newborn, is slightly less successful, an ambitious but
ultimately anti-climactic (!) postscript.
A fragmented style pervades the book, and although it often yields
up truly exciting syntactical dislocations and rich juxtapositions
jumping with aural rhythm—"Ideally (so already never) what
they desired, sired, is a love that would flood everyday fears communicable:
each broken step, open depth, blackened call, searing grasp, oh ruined
cell"—it also serves as a means of distancing the character
Liv, the reader, and Rankine herself from this compelling and most
human subject matter. In one sense, the fragmentation feels appropriate
to the harried state of an expectant mother's mind, but I am a reader
who is very interested in non-linear poetry, and I found myself wanting
more of the plot, the story. I was therefore deeply charmed and satisfied
when Rankine slips into an extremely earthy and straightforward narrative,
which is often presented as dialogue between Liv and Erland, as in
this section from the fourth month:
About the pregnancy...should we tell the parents?
You mean before they tell us? Maybe they'll think I've had breast
implants.
Which reminds me, will the baby be your only customer?
I always suspected you were the type to take milk out of the mouths
of babes.
The lowliness of my tongue confesseth...
Jesus?
Augustine. Saint.
Rankine shows restraint: this kind of passage only happens sporadically,
but when it happens, it offers a kind of emotionality and directness
that complements the more abstract poems and endears us to the couple
and their circumstance. I was grateful for this eclecticism: I think
it's a book which is meant to be read more or less cover-to-cover,
and the varied styles make for a compelling read. I teach contemporary
literature to first-year college students, and I wager that Plot
would make a superb classroom introduction to the kinds of innovative
writing currently happening in American poetry. Rankine is certainly
among the most talented younger poets writing today, and this collection—with
its important and relevant story, mastery of linguistic art, and inventive
experiments—is as suitable for students of poetry as it is for
bedside reading, to be kept on top of the literary pregnant woman's
copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting.
