by Jessica Fisher
Yale University Press 2007
Reviewed by Jackie Clark

I Can, I Does

Maybe there is no way around making sweeping generalizations about the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize: winning this prize is unquestionably an honor; the fact that one’s manuscript is selected and will sit among the likes of John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich is something; most “younger” poets would be pleased to be selected.

Another point which begs to be made is that certain types of poems/manuscripts seem to be championed in this circumstance: poems that are safe but pretty, tense but disclosed, risqué but not truly subversive. Welcome to Jessica Fisher’s Frail-Craft, a book that balances the dominant and egocentric “I” with the more universal and heavily praised collective identity. This book is full of what feel like genuine experiences and emotions coupled with sometimes interesting but mostly tired and intrusive insights.

The first poem in Frail-Craft is called “Journeying,” which nicely frames a partial conceit of the book. The poem has no “I”s and is lauded as the universal, metaphorical journey that we all are destined to make. There is danger and we are scared, etc., etc. Fast-forward to “Dream for My Other Brother” and you get the rest of the conceit. Not only is the “I” doing the directing in this case, but it is also cast as the knowing one, the one that can protect, the one that knows best. This is the dichotomy of these poems: a passive universal versus a knowing “I.” Each operates in a clever manner; each attempts to sound like the other in order to prevent being self-absorbed or superficial.

The “I” makes commentary on its own commentary in many of these poems. In “Canal,” the third installment in the “Nonsight” sequence, the speaker postures, “but if the eye can love—and it can, it does—then I held you and was held.” Though the tone is controlled and forward, it is in need of reassurance, of imposing dashes meant to confirm what the speaker might have been able to state implicitly. “A Riddle for the Body” ends with a similarly self-conscious/self-aware need for validation: “What do you have to say about that?” And in “Flayed,” the constant reliance on the “I” makes the poem rounded and deflates everything else the poem seems poised to accomplish.

In “Now—The Parade” we see again how uncomfortable Fisher is with letting the claims of a poem stand on their own. Toward the end of the poem this line appears most unexpectedly: “Distinctions in values desired and values attainable.” This simple abstraction pleased me, but again, Fisher doesn’t seem one to leave well enough alone; she continues, “Though I will allow you to draw your own conclusion on the above, I am compelled to tell you […]” It’s not so much that what we are told is problematic; it is just the fact that the speaker feels the need to tell, tell, tell—in essence, to explain her poems.

Much in the way that Fisher’s poems tend to end with some kind of internal commentary, many begin with precursors, short phrases that guide the reader into the poem. “June” begins, “Most unfathomable.” “Castaway,” begins, “It began with a lesson.” “Frail-Craft” begins, “It’s a true story.” These phrases do little more than defend a poem that has yet to be placed under attack; there’s the hint that our poet fears no one will believe her.

Yet the poems in Frail-Craft do have a certain delicateness to them. The prose-poem “Novella” is about a missing hero, a missing love, etc., and works hard for its mystery; omniscient voices don’t intrude. To return my sweeping generalization, different types of poems do different things and these seem to be a comfort for people who fancy themselves sensitive and perceptive but unwanting of a mess, linguistically, psychologically, or otherwise.

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