WhimsyLand

I just opened the dryer and found Emily sleeping among the underwear.  It's a front-loader and I tend to leave the door open too often, I suspect.  She was probably getting some rest from dealing with Rimbaud, who outweighs her by 8 pounds and can be brutish.  I may have to send them to couples' therapy.

Among the CNN headlines:  "Ford body tours Washington".

I am trying to understand The Babies by Sabrina Orah Mark, a Christmas present from my son Derek.  It is composed of six sections of prose poems, which I read first by jumping around from here to there, and then more methodically.  Many of the pieces leave an impression, and much of the phrasing is elegant or startling or both.  I got to the point where I wanted to get something from the poems, at least as much understanding as I took from the poem Sabrina dedicated to her grandfather.  First, I went to the back cover, but there was only the same head feints and critical blather that we have come to expect from back covers.  This from the judge, Jane Miller:  "They offer a look at a time we must face, or else face its consequences. It happens that, in The Babies, we aren't sure if we are looking at past, present, or future. Sabrina Orah Mark ultimately posits what is surely meant as praise for poetry: timelessness."  And this from Claudia Rankine:  " Rarely do we encounter poems that are so precisely framed, though on their surface seemingly whimsical and erratic. These poems are gorgeous, intelligent, and disturbing. They are owned by the imagination that created them and the history that created her."  OK, no help there.  Then, I read Ray McDaniel's review at Constant Critic, which seemed relatively confident in the process of demystification (with the excellent suggestion to read the poems as if one were the object of whispering).  There's a section of Ms. Mark's The Proposal cited in the review:

Vintage darkling, metropolis? I asked. But you said no
without sugar, you said arms. I said please. I was bent
at the knee and scripting. You said fix it. Sky
turning from broomstick to bone, you said angel, I said yes,
quiet as a hill going up, I said yes. A hunger. Or to get to
The bottom
of it, I said plate of oranges with pepper on top, you said
nothing. I said rustle, with a bad case of Doll’s Eye, I said—

This is quite typical of the level of surreality at play in The Babies.  McDaniel reads a lot into this passage, suggesting that "darkling" stands in subconsciously for "darling", which contributes to "a specific grammar of intimacy".  This is a perfectly acceptable result of Reader Response, and I applaud McDaniel's creativity.  I think I need more cues to sort this out.  I don't know why I can't approach this kind of writing as I would Pollock or Kandinsky.  Anyway, I'm not complaining . . . I'd rather read Ms. Mark's work than 50 retrospective banalities in the next mainstream prize-winning book.

You all have a GREAT New Year.