Van Clief-Stefanon, Lyrae. ] Open Interval [. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2009. 96 pp. $14.95 (paper).
Reviewed by CM Burroughs
Open interval, a mathematical term, refers to a line that has no endpoints. For the book Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon has put forth, I consider the term a reference to the need for unobstructed movement along the spectrum of identity. However, such movement is not always eagerly accomplished or endeavored without anxieties. As I enter and enter again Van Clief-Stefanon's ] Open Interval [, I am unable to detach myself from verse such as:
I hear mark
Used for mock
When I was young
Old men sang quit
Marking me
Like birds
[. . .]
This was the South
This is the North
And I am
And I was
[. . .]
I will leave
Here too (6)
“Dear John,” excerpted above, is but one poem from Van Clief-Stefanon’s second book, but this excerpt represents the beginning of a voice that is fascinated by the flexibility of language, and the ability to move freely, mutate even, into versions of self. Given this focus, consumption becomes a natural impulse, and occurs in the poem “The Buffet Dream”:
I could taste everything: the whole of this world: the idea—sweet
as leaving home, as being where I am not supposed to be
[. . .] I set out for territories, hope to swallow
all, at least—: every drop zone I can find-: A black girl on the river Hunger:
—as free as that. (9)
This hunger for experience during the pursuit for self and/or identity nudges the poems into spaces of striving, danger, and triumph. And it is movement, acutely exhibited in the poem “Icarus,” that seems to be the unalterable condition of the subjects of these poems, no matter the inevitable perish or joy:
I learned to fly
I learned to want to fly
From him when
He flew and he fell
The way night will
Always fall
Blue skies straight through
To black (5)
Van Clief-Stefanon’s poems are at times fraught with agitation, as in “Lost” where she writes “but for we, two, touching, agreeing/ this is my body. Agreeing, I still belong in it” (10). There is also the occurrence of stutter, which, in the following excerpt from “Andromeda”, gives the impression of one trying to convince herself that she occupies or owns her body: “this/ body this body this body/ this body” (12).
This striving for identity and to be able to construct a recognizable self surfaces constantly with clash; nothing may be discovered without it. And the clash appears to ground itself in the most pervasive speaker of these poems—a speaker that remains female, Southern, and uncomfortable with impositions of boundary. That is to say: the desire for freedom, for free movement (for a universal identity), is just that, desire.
There is some solace in belonging in one body, however. Van Clief-Stefanon stumbles on the realm of astronomy, specifically bodies that exhibit transformations superficial in appearance though formally fixed. The ambition for superficial transformation within a fixed space becomes most clear in the poems whose titles begin “RR Lyrae,” in reference to astronomer John Goodricke’s identification of stars that encountered regular changes in brightness:
Past breath: External: Past gesture: A field—:
the empty space-pressed up between the ends
of fingers and my face that I extend
out into the openness—: a thing I build
against silence—Dear John:—This letter penned
in air itself—: in space—a name I find
in your hand—: (36)
Van Clief-Stefanon’s language is textured; images are layered, all for the purpose of conveying a speaker’s wish to be identified, preoccupation for movement and obsession with space. One might conjecture blank space, black space, and, yes, white space.
In order to attend to Van Clief-Stefanon’s address of space, I must acknowledge her use of punctuation. The late Reginald Shepherd’s thoughts on the modern and postmodern lyric may strengthen and/or threaten my interpretation of Van Clief-Stefanon’s goals thus far, but will ultimately be useful in distinguishing the tension I find between her content and experiment. In his anthology Lyric Postmodernisms, Shepherd writes:
While most of the Anglo-American modernists, engaged in the desire and pursuit of the whole, used [syntactic fracture or deformation, multiplication of voices, jump-cuts, etc.] to try to achieve a new and more true synthesis, many contemporary artists who might be called postmodern employ such devices to refute the very possibility of synthesis. There is no whole toward which they strive, only holes upon which they stumble [. . .]. (xiv)
Out of Van Clief-Stefanon’s forty poems, twenty-six use some combination of the dash and colon, a compulsive activity that I believe to be Van Clief-Stefanon’s experimental work. My encounters with the punctuation sometimes produced the effect of enlightenment, and, at other moments, I felt as if I was struck in the throat by the poet’s palm. I require Shepherd’s articulation of the goals of contemporary lyric poets in order to soothe my readings of this technique. I want to understand how to read Van Clief-Stefanon’s particular use of punctuation.
The majority of this critique of ] Open Interval [ harps on the issue of identity, the striving to possess identity. Well, the poems never quite feel settled on self---never at rest, but move agitatedly within the body. I use this restlessness to comprehend her use of dash and colon. They seem to represent further disruptive variables: extension of image/extension of action/shifts in time/silence/etc.---perhaps. Please do not be disarmed by my list; it is my attempt to present some of the uses I find represented by the technique. It is the case that there are no discernible rules as to how this technique operates. Yet it is so pervasive, so ubiquitous, that I search for rules, reasons. Therein is Shepherd a blessing and a guide. Take, for instance, this excerpt from the poem "RR Lyrae: Will":
1 When I am dead I may not remember
2 the mess of purple irises in
3 the neighbor's garden---or the way I leaned
4 against their fence to look at him.
5 Lost to rot, the body:---And the soul?
[. . .]
9 It makes me sad, the things I wanted—:
10 love’s gorgeous force:—a tight fat cloud of blue
11 hydrangea—: someone coaxed the soil to color
12 ] the universe:—cancer of the hellelu:—[
13 my name in his mouth:---an arrogance of vapor---:
14 a star---: diminished: ---sucked down into paper. (13)
It is useful to think of this technique as the presentation of what Shepherd calls "holes." That is a logical enough conclusion. But isn't a caesura a hole? Isn't a line break, too, a hole? I ask this not to be crude or dismissive, but only to suggest the sometimes flawlessness of Van Clief-Stefanon's technique (see line 9, the dash and colon stand in for and contain things wanted) and the sometimes imperfection, as in line 13. I am not confident that "my name in his mouth" requires this symbol of indication (the colon) and this symbol of omission (the dash.) So why not a caesura? Well, to fight for Van Clief-Stefanon's decision, caesura might offer too much substance if the overarching goal of discovering identity is to be left unfulfilled; there is a way in which the colon and dash, together, cancel each other out. Simultaneously, the device indicates and omits, causing whatever is sought to remain elusive and unclaimed. How brilliantly confounding.
In White Ink, Hélène Cixous speaks of writing as exploration:
One always writes in darkness. One cannot write [. . .] there’s no sense in writing except in incomprehension, advancing in incomprehension, advancing toward incomprehension. What is understood is summed up, settled, and that’s that. It’s necessary to leave what is understood. It’s necessary to de-understand and reapply oneself to learning: that’s the heroism of writing. (20)
And in the poem “The Ends of Praise,” Van Clief-Stefanon writes, “we locate ourselves hurting/ for longitude.” Of course. I can think of no better location for contemporary poetry than one of expanse/reach—: innovation, but can she be applauded her for setting up poems to strive and placing every known obstruction in their space? In the manner of finding holes and attempting the deliberately ineffective work of filling them in, Van Clief-Stefanon aspires toward an appealing form of Cixous’ heroism.
Works Referenced
Sellers, Susan, ed. White Ink. New York: U of Columbia P, 2008.
Shepherd, Reginald, ed. Lyric Postmodernisms. Denver: Counterpath Press, 2008.
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CM BURROUGHS is a fellow of The MacDowell Colony and Cave Canem. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Runes, jubilat, PLUCK!, Bat City Review, and Tuesday; An Art Project. She received her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches poetry and creative writing.
