The Essential Guide to Flight by Celeste Augé

Abstract

VERSE Celeste Auge. The Essential Guide to Flight. Cliffsof Moher, County Clare, Ireland. Salmon (Dufour, distr.). 2009.81 pages. $21.95. isbn978-1-907056-05-5 Celeste Auge craftspoems that are clean and precise. They are brief lyricsthatexercise theirforce within a well-contained area, cutting them selves short at the exact point when furtherlength would attenuate their claims. Yet this salutary quality is also theweakness of these poems: the shorter Auge's poems become, the more they risk becoming cli ched in their oppositions (sun and moon, lifeand death in "Opposing Light"). When she allows herself to open her own forms to longer lines and occasional disjunctures, the poetry profits by it,and Auge manages to limn thedelicate balance formed by the various geometries that come together in a moment of vision. In "Fired Clay," for example, we understand the possible ways the speaker is trying to view her domestic interior: in terms of her beloved words?seeking toheal the breach between signifier and signi fied?and in termsof angles of per spective and shades of light, "until each picture and pattern become / something else, the furtheryou / step back." In thisproject she owes a debt to American poet Jorie Graham, who brings her preternatural sensi tivitytovisual detail tobear on her overarching philosophical project of comprehending the process by which the unrelenting mind per ceives and tries to understand the laws behind the material world. Her poetry also suffers from the same drawbacks as Graham's occasion ally does, most notably because too much pattern-making and too little reader-friendly visual dramatization runs the risk of ponderousness. One hasty image may be asked to bear too much metaphysical weight, so that the sightof one man helping an elderly companion walk down a city street causes the speaker to tell us, "you thinkhow matter can shift / in the split of a second," prompting a skeptical reader to query whether such amental leap is justifiedby the image itself, which does not read ily elicit such a thought.Of course itcould be justified,but thiswould require a greater degree of dramati zation and formal maneuvering than the poem offers. It is better to err by having too much ambition than too little, however. Auge's project is to be commended. The titlesof thepoems, meanwhile, insert sudden glints of ironic brilliance into the volume: the above-cited poem is "Stealing a Clock fromAuden," and it takes its place alongside such inspired titles as "I Dream in Solid Pine," "Molly (The Golden Mule)," "Nothing on My Lips," and "Telepathy inOrdi nary Lives." In all, consistency is not a quality one should expect ina first volume. Celeste Auge's poems are commendable for their care, deep thought,and intellectualambition. Magdalena Kay UniversityofVictoria,B.C. Roberto Bolaho. The Romantic Dogs: 1980-1998. Laura Healy, tr.New York. New Directions. 2008. 143 pages. $ 15.95. isbn978-0-8112-1801 -6 When Roberto Bolano first published Los perros romanticos (in 1993, and again in2000), along with fourother poetry collections, critics regarded his anecdotal narrative style as unpoetic. In response, Bolano opted to turn the same themes and his own frustration into a poetic prose that resulted in thenovels thatgave = him increasing and, posthumously, = lasting fame. = This miscellaneous compila- = tion of forty-fivepoems is made = up of fragmented verses that dis- = regard rules of punctuation or for- = mal rhyme. Their surrealistic meta- = phors surprise the reader by their = intensity and cinematic effects. Here = Bolano pays tribute to his favorite = poets: Juan Ramon Jimenez, Ernesto = Cardenal, Cesar Vallejo, and most = of all Nicanor Parra. From Parra = he derives his colloquial style, and = exhorts Latin American poets to fol- = low inhis footsteps. = Mainly autobiographical, this = collection is dedicated to Bolano's = wife and his son, Lautaro. From = his hippie, rebellious youth in Mex- = ico, and after escaping from the = repressive Pinochet regime, Bolano = remembers himself as someone who = "had lost a country / but won a = dream." He struggles between look- = ing back or moving forward, aware = that "back then,growing up would = have been a crime. / But I am here = . . . with the romantic dogs"?a = January-February 2010 i71 ...