The Anatomy of Jennifer Sperry Steinorth's A Wake with Nine Shades:

Abstract

The Anatomy of Jennifer Sperry Steinorth's A Wake with Nine Shades: Lauren K. Carlson (bio) The Anatomy of Jennifer Sperry Steinorth's A Wake with Nine Shades: An Experimental Review Lauren K. Carlson College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2019. 98 pages. $19.95 1. The cerebrospinal nerves are forty-three in number.1 2. In relation with cerebrospinal nerves are two rows of central ganglia, also joined to each other by vertical strands of nerve fibers so as to constitute a pair of knotted cords, the sympathetic trunks, which reach from the base of the skull to the coccyx.2 3. A brief google search of the word genius produces a dictionary definition which reads, "exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability." It offers the following sentence an example of the word genius in use: 4. she was a teacher of genius. 5. Why teacher? Why not genius, she? 6. Jennifer Sperry Steinorth's debut full-length collection A Wake with Nine Shades is movement. A honed, precise, musculature baring "the state of the soul's weather" within its pages: 7. Midway through our night's sleep I woke to find the dream lost My body shaken from it—salt \ / 8. Mid through a moonless wayfaring Thought unrelenting \ / 9. Martha Graham (a genius choreographer credited with giving dance a new depth as a vehicle for the intense and forceful expression of primal emotions) contends "Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it." 10. In her essay "The Ordinary Woman Theory" novelist Caitlin Horrocks writes, "a recent request on Twitter for suggestions of movies about female geniuses was answered with a host of dubious nominations: Moana (fictional, child) Matilda (fictional, child) Captain Marvel (fictional, childless). [Parentheticals, mine.] 11. Horrocks continues, "I don't think anyone would respond to a query for movies about male geniuses by recommending Harry Potter. They'd respond with biopics about tortured geniuses, because that is a recognized genre, and the genre is male. 12. The 'great man' narrative, whether biographical or fictional, is a story about exceptionalism, not connection. I realized partway through writing The Vexations that I am less interested in the pole stars than in the constellations, and in the dark spaces between the lights." [Emphasis mine.] 13. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita.3 [End Page 263] 14. Caroline Bergvall's VIA is a multimedia art installation based on 47 translations of the opening lines of Dante's Inferno, with the 48th variation composed by Ciaran Maher as a fractal structure from the voice recording. 15. Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward path had been lost,4 16. Steinorth depicts a speaker midway through the journey of her life. Confronted by grief, death, loss, accident, and violence, the speaker gestures over and over again, the opening poem alluding to the Inferno in varying, irregular stanzas set apart by blank space and unusual punctuation—slashes and backslashes. 17. "At the midpoint of the night we were allotted I found myself in dark apartment \ / /" 18. There is a fluid turbulence at the center of this collection. This core is both figurative and literal. The poem "Wake: A sleep in Forty-Something Winks" (like the cerebrospinal nervous system) interconnects the entire work in relation to recurring italicized "winks." Each "wink" is an untitled sequence of three to five stanzas, never appearing longer than one page. The stanzas are set apart by unusual punctuation, separated by varying sequences of slashes and backslashes—with forty-one stanzas in all—like vertebrae. 19. The word fractal produces a dictionary definition which reads: a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation. 20. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear...