Reviewed by Carol Barrett
even my dreams are over the constant state of anxiety
by Irene Cooper
Airlie Press, 2024, 95 pages, $18.00
ISBN 978-1-950404-14-8
Available at www.airliepress.org
Irene Cooper’s second book of poetry provides a stunning exploration of form, with the poems organized by section titles drawn from various psychological theories and experiments. What this unique overlay offers is an enhanced confidence in the unconscious dimension of the poems, particularly those with familial roots.
The subjects of these poems are many and varied––film and dream, family and fantasy, intimacy and loss, nature’s creatures and the threats we pose to them. Some explore the explicit dimensions of the writer’s life, poking more than a bit of fun at our propensities. In “mono-lineage, six generations” she begins posterity measures: if you are reading this poem & I am dead, for god’s sake have the decency to fix my line breaks.
While this knack for humor plays out throughout the collection, a number of the poems are deadly serious, especially the sequence titled “Imprisoned as resisters in the last years of the Nazi invasion and occupation of the Isle of Jersey, Claude Cahun (Lucy) and Marcel Moore (Suzanne) enact a correspondence.” The state of anxiety addressed in the title of the collection makes itself known in these prose poems:
I understand, from a bored guard who forgets what I am, that the tunnels burrowed into our island are so arranged by the labor of Russian slaves, but in arrangement for what, I wonder? Escape, or a deeper, more cancerous occupation?
Even so, these letters are love poems. One of the resisters proclaims to his beloved: What do you want of me? I can tell you that you give me everything, are every home to me, even now.
The sonnet is one of the classic forms of love poetry in English literature. Cooper adapts this form for “American dream: a sonnet tiara,” marshalling recollections of the person I assume to be her father. She traces his experience of the Great Depression and its repercussions in his life. This series is my favorite work in the collection, constantly invoking memorable vignettes, including the sale of a set of lionel trains and the hoarding of rubber bands, nails, and tennis balls. In a merging of sadness and celebration, we are told:
you leave the best hospital in new york
abandon the bedside of your eldest boy
exhausted and emaciated from chemo
from radiation you take
your wife’s arm and walk her
to the nearest chop house or red sauce place
order up an old fashioned strip steak rare baked potato
and ask her to dance
In the final sonnet we come to this moment: your death is quick and – you would have liked this – / just like the movies.
More spirited in original inventions of form, other poems challenge our expectations for what a poem should look like. Some plant their titles in bold text within the body of the poem, instead of at the beginning. Cooper encourages us to persist in our search for meaning, as there is no easy opening label. Others pursue the possibilities of concrete poetry, taking the shape of specific objects addressed in the language of the poem, e.g., a tied ribbon (“where is/ my prize”) and a gun (“the first episode of the watchmen”).
There is a poem section titled “5.[straight]” whose lines end in a graceful curve, echoing the contrast between curved lines in nature and our flawed notions of efficiency. Even more boldly, Cooper arranges lines within squares, planting them in an array on a page, where you sometimes have to reposition the page to read them (“1st orgasm,” “5 cinquains to address the 4 o’clock ennui of the home office”).
Drawing on unusual sources, Cooper even takes us on a couple of merry adventures prompted by emails she received from Academia.edu: “Are you the Irene Cooper” and “Claim.” These poems especially delighted me as I have been curious about the distinctive achievements of persons who share my name, but who are working in entirely different fields. Cooper quotes:
Are you the Irene Cooper who wrote THE SECRETION, MEASUREMENT AND FUNCTION OF A TESTICULAR LHRH-LIKE FACTOR?
In this prose poem and others, she blends the normal cadence of phrases to create unexpected language:
or are you the one who wrote about her father’s death only to get the details wrong method poor & destroyed by popside stick sculpture no-name cat beatitude everything belongs to the mother…
There is a bundle of surprises awaiting the reader of Irene Cooper’s text. We may be living in anxious times, but these poems help us to smile, even as we agonize over the directions we are collectively and individually going.
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