An Alabaster Flask, Winner of the Word Press First Book Prize

t’s inescapably true; content requires form. The type of form is arguably irrelevant to the general reader. If form works in the end—as context of the poem—its means are successful. Whether form is organic, imported, traditional, or experimental makes no substantial difference, despite the squawking of trend-minded, agenda-thumping or tenure-seeking poets, literary critics, or reviewers.

Unlike so many of the younger, so-called New Formalist or Expansionist poets, Jennifer Reeser requires formal containers to give shape to her explosive content. In her debut, award-winning collection, Reeser places her high-voltage sensibility in An Alabaster Flask (the title of the collection)—leaving readers to wonder if the handmade antique will support the poet’s distilled yearning—and this dramatic tension empowers the work across the entire volume, exposing both human vulnerabilities and poetic artifice as two paths of terrifying solace at play against one another constantly.

While others may stretch meters for sport or revive a form from another era for novelty’s sake, Reeser needs the structure to sustain her intense vision. That’s not to say that she’s not facile, flexible, and subtle within these formal measures; she has a knack for pouring her combustible material into delicate, even dangerously dainty, containers—often, I wonder, as if to test the clashing cultures and the collapse of time. Will this uneasy marriage transform what Reeser sees as the doldrums of our era into something rife with significance and pregnant with cultural structures that point the way to transcendence? Think of this poetry as Anti-Post-Modernism, as a pilgrimage aching toward meaning. Meaning, you must understand to understand this potent volume, is incredibly important to Reeser. Her quest for poetical substance drives the poet to restless experimentation with a wide range of subjects, personal and public history, forms, and cultural periods.

Ms. Reeser also examines the fine gossamer threads separating epistemology, theology, and poetics. Some of the shorter, more concise poems, particularly the sonnets, rank among the most realized pieces in the collection. Their strength and precision would have been enough to grant the manuscript its justly awarded prize, the Word Press First Book Prize, by any judge worth his or her salt. Take, for example, this brilliant, classical argument wrapped in the guise of a sonnet, quoted in full:

Impromptu Reply to a Critic of the Sonnet
  
Oh, rail, my pretty one, if you so choose,
that pain implies there must exist a pleasure,
or that “to win” suggests there is “to lose,”
or that a cheat belies an honest measure.
Or shriek, my purple darling, to the sky
when streets require edges, not to wander;
that Romeo must ever live to die;
that absence won’t ensure the heart grows fonder.
Continue, by all means—blame fourteen lines
as one more shackle to enslave the earth.
Proclaim our art’s an exploit of designs
whose character in height besets its girth.
Then, when you’ve finished, call it cruel and odd
when men move freely in the schemes of God.

At her best, Reeser tosses in emotional grenades that reverberate pathos, throat-stopping empathy, and even disgust. Such poignant details can be found in most of the poems—in a line or movement that stutters or sings with earned intimacy. Here’s a selection taken mid-poem from “Arclight,” a poem where the speaker’s father serves in The Vietnam War:

Nine months into his tour, by this time schooled
in all the niggling, finer points of war—
how not to trust sweet children, open gates,
and how to be reborn for mash and smoke— …

On the critical side, Reeser’s highly rhetorical style threatens to implode a few poems with otherwise great promise. The powerful, but perhaps overwritten poem that ends the collection “To the Dragonfly” shows the poet’s few flaws: lofty conceits painted with archaic sentence structures that give undue importance to the actual action of the scene (“Release your black wing downward, in honor of the recompense I crave”), the utilization of unspecific psychological and philosophical concepts to convey a point (“let human ego sadden every solipsistic valley”), and other attempts to wrangle depth by mixing both the metaphorical and literal subjects at once (a la the Metaphysical poets, who seem to exert a strong influence on Reeser’s style). These traits may work better in her future work.   

The poet’s sheer ambition and scope merits careful study, even, if in the end, the few, flawed pieces in An Alabaster Flask are merely warm ups for a forthcoming masterwork. So what if the poet unabashedly wears her tastes on her hard-crafted, lace cuff? Who cares if she mixes contemporary and archaic words without a trace of self-conscious irony? Wasn’t Lowell guilty of these same excesses in his first collection?

What is important is that Jennifer Reeser has a driving passion, an eye for both emotional and physical detail, an ear for subtlety, an understanding of the tradition and craft of poetry, and playful intensity most young poets lack. Already, in her first collection, she displays mastery of short forms and affecting imagistic detail. When all the elements in this collection converge, watch out world. Ms. Reeser’s work will remind us why poetry matters. Until that time, this collection offers enough to keep us curious, very curious.

© Michael Graber