Reading...

Just before the weekend began, I re-read Lynn Emanuel's Then, Suddenly-- (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999) and I have been thinking about it all weekend. What Emanuel does here is create a collection of poems that feels like a lyrical story about the making of a book. And while that might generate a few eye rolls from the "Can-we-please-avoid-meta?" crowd, it's not what they think. Then, Suddenly-- may be a book about a book, but it's not about game-playing, and the book doesn't trade emotion for insight. In the poems I meet the "things" of a book: the writer, the reader (myself?), the title; I meet many of the concepts without which the idea of "book" becomes empty. And, in the midst of these meetings, I feel present in the creation of what I hold. It's a feeling I've not encountered in poetry before. I enjoy it. What I am trying to say is that when I first read Then, Suddenly--, soon after it came out, all I allowed myself to see was Emanuel's wit at handling the writing about writing (here "wit" can stand for intelligence or intelligent humor). Now, after re-reading Then, Suddenly-- I realize that her book is not just full of wit, but also of purpose and risk. It is these three elements that make the book so successful. It is risky to write about writing. But Emanuel takes that risk. And what's purposeful here? Well, it's not that Emanuel is purposeful, or that the book is purposeful; it's the way in which the book is purposefully elaborate. As I read, I realize I am not just reading a book of poetry that sets out to be a book about a book. I am reading a book that sets out to help me--poem by poem--construct the book, construct the author, construct myself, and to construct (at least for me) construction itself. Perhaps that's why Walt Whitman and Getrude Stein appear in here. These days, as I work on my own collection, I will pay attention to that triad operating so smoothly in Emanuel's book: wit, risk, and purpose.