There is a kind of poetry that take a subject matter and uses the poems to occupy it. It’s like the poet is a figure inside the subject witnessing to the subject’s existence, and from that insider’s perspective she discovers new explanations for the subject, new configurations of reasoning. Like why it exists, and how the poet’s discovered herself existing inside the subject. It’s hard to describe. And yet I find myself drawn to this kind of poetry. I’m thinking Brandon Shimoda’s ‣ or Alice Notley’s ‣. It’s like what Steensen does in a section of Well’s, “Dear Years Between,” where the poet remembers herself as a young woman, vibrant in the summer, like her and her friend, Becky, are two bodies existing as parts of the summer’s biology. Their choices, their movements, they were not intended as mere participants. They were a biological consciousness that could see the summer for what it was, like they were fully integrated into it. And they were witness to what that means. That simultaneity is her poetics.
Like there could be a capacity of subject. A quantity to it, or a physical consistency to it. I’ve always been wary of the interchangeable “matter” and “text” thing, where some writers prefer their literature to have a significance that’s more than just language. And so they refer to it as “material.” I suppose it sounds more substantive that way. I think of Steensen’s ability, however, to give some material quality to the subject she’s writing about. In Well it’s her breast cancer diagnosis. In ‣ it’s her faith. In ‣ it’s her origin story growing up in Ohio. Each book’s subject materializes into something that can be probed, and reconsidered and recrafted into a writer’s occupation.
I do wish Well hadn’t been so tentative of its predecessors. I understand the intentional nod to other writers who have chronicled their struggle with breast cancer. I understand the precedent to acknowledge the tradition the poet is writing into. And to find the footing that negotiates between personal testimony and a common experience. There is a deliberative quality to the work that feels different than the poetry of body, like that summer moment that comes in the book’s second half. Or the bewildered perspective on a world so passive about the poisons injected into it.
that relates to a common Which should and shouldn’t take from her personal where the poem first happens is somethe urge to write versus the resistance to indulge in writing what matters most to the poet. Should she write about her cancer? Is she only helping to spread the cancer if she records its affect on her body. I’m not sure what to think of the book’s opening, because it’s such a “reluctance” on the page. Not in a way that I would just it all performance. I am persuaded by the poet’s reluctance. Her reservation. It would have benefited from some editing, though.
Ultimately Steensen writes about her cancer. The first-person presence. And there might be a little too much time spent being reluctant. There are plenty of reasons to hesitate. is going to write about her cancer.
The following tags are a purely subjective approach I’ve used for reading this book. Tagging, for me, acknowledges that slotting a book into hard categories or “schools” can be elusive when it comes to 21st Century poetry. In response, I’ve developed tags whose lenses operate from subject matter, identity poetics, and stylistics.