03-28-13:Patrice Vecchione Weaves 'The Knot Untied'
A Story of Poems
Stories can tell themselves. A story can emerge in any environment, and in 'The Knot Untied' Patrice Vecchione offers readers a subtle, fictionalized memoir in poetry. From the sequence of sometimes stark, sometimes sensual images and works, a story sneaks in and tells itself, making points with prevarication to underscore Vecchione's emotional veracity. The poems in 'The Knot Untied' are not confessional, nor are they obviously linked. Each one stands on its own merits, and these are clear. But the reading experience of the book itself goes beyond the individual pieces to take the reader on a very distinct and very real journey in language.
'The Knot Untied' is very carefully structured collection. It's divided into five parts; An Interlacing, Tangle, My Gordian Knot, The Tie That Binds, and The Knot Untied. The effect of this is to keep the reader's attention focused but also to make the reading itself easier. Each section can be read in a single, slow sitting, and the poems within each section hold a consistent and well-architected tone and feel. This is bolstered by the cover art from the poet herself and the beautiful design and layout that make reading a pleasure.
Between the sections, there are themes and images that are echoed, escalated and tapered in the sections; some quite obviously, others, more subtly. Overall, the book itself becomes a poem in which each component is not a word but a poem. The book-poem tells a subtle, surreal story of getting through a life, of marriage and mothers, of apprehending the details of the day, of making it to the end of that day and anticipating another. Vecchione captures the ineffable without effort.
On a per-poem level, there's a lot of variety even as the overall effect shows an undercurrent of connection. "Dispel Fear and Hesitation," which begins the book, is an appropriately strong invocation and invitation. "The Garden Thieves" is a close observation of suburban life and marriage, an evocation of the ordinary that is itself anything but. The poems build in intensity to the middle section and poem from the section takes its title, "My Gordian Knot," where Vecchione succinctly captures, "a helter-skelter of words run amok, / she reduced her daughter to prey." The intensity found here draws down in the works that follow as the writer finds the words that need to be released, the story that needs to be told.
Readers will find a variety of themes here; marriage, bees, the mother-poet/daughter relationship, a healthier connection to her father, the details of the natural world that comprise the small joys of every day are but a few. But Vecchione herself is always there, our narrator, our guide, our knot-maker and knot-untier, our poet, the quiet, clear voice of a life well-lived and the teller of a story well-told. We emerge from 'The Knot Untied' whole and complete, observant of the bits of our selves that tangle through our lives. Language is used well, and words are given their due. In the silent moments of our lives, when no one is about, 'The Knot Untied' gives us words and ways to see those words as parts of our lives and a parts of our selves that deserve and reward close, careful attention.
A self-published, online serial is one sort of reading experience, while a self-contained, mass-market hardcover is quite another. Each brings its own set of expectations. 'Wool' by Hugh Howey started out as the former, and now, thanks to Simon & Schuster is the latter. Given its inception, one might well have cause to worry that the seams will show, and while that is to a degree the case, it's really no problem whatsoever. 'Wool' boxes the reader into an enclosed, claustrophobic world, but opens up by giving readers characters whose explorations of that world we enjoy ever more with each page turned. Howey underplays every assumption we might make and manages to craft his own genre in the process.
'Wool' plays out in three acts that show some of the seams of its serial inception. As a reading experience in the hardcover novel, it feels like we are burrowing ever deeper into this world and it proves to be an effective method of immersing us in a story where readers know a lot more about what's going on than the characters. The first act gives us Holsten and his wife, both inhabitants of the Silo, an underground city that is all its those who live there have ever known. That's because what's above ground is deadly, even to the unlucky who are sent outside for cleaning in elaborate protective suits.
The second act gives us Mayor Jahns, an elderly woman who runs the Silo and the deputy, Marnes, who set out in search of Juliette, a woman who works at the very bottom of the Silo and whom Marnes thinks is a good candidate for the new Sheriff. They have to make the journey from top to bottom, one step at a time, to find her.
The vital strength of Howey's world is the cast of characters of which the world itself is a crucial member. Howey's Silo is a 1950's nightmare made real, full of clanking steel and grinding gears, most of which seem to be made to grind down those who live inside. There's an IT department that has its own best interests in mind, and a server farm that would have seemed rather quaint about twenty years ago. The overall effect is not futuristic, but like something from a Civil Defense Public Service announcement. The Silo is not a people-friendly place for the remnants of humanity to live.
Howey's humans; Holsten, Mayor Jahns, Marnes, Juliette and more than a few others, all have a worn-down feel as well. They ring true to anyone who has ever slogged through a forty hour week and felt only the strength to make it to the couch and sleep. But seeing the human connections that spark even in this dreary, dimly-lit world brings some real verve and warmth the the chilly world. Howey infuses our reading with the hopes born of readers who know pretty much everything the characters don't. He uses this tension to effectively drive the plot.
'Wool' offers a hard headed vision that revels in paradox. On one hand, we know from the get-go what's going on, and question why the characters don't. But we could be wrong, and Howey offers up a variety of twists and some great set-pieces to suggest how the Silo came to be. It does not take long for the world of the Silo to seem as real as the world in which you're reading about the Silo. By then Howey has you, and no matter what kind of reading experience you might have been expecting, what you get is a novel a new world that feels old and an old-fashioned-novel that works some very new territory.
Whether you like the world of the Silo or not, you're certainly not going to forget it. Every step you take, up or down, leads to a new level of your life, and while your confines may not be made of old, rusting steel, they are just as effective. You might choose to go outside; you can choose to go outside. And once that choice is made, you won't be able to return to the safety of your old world, ever.
New to the Agony Column
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Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
