A Raw Ride: review of Marty Cain's The Wound Is (Not) Real—by Su Zi

 

                  

     The reader approaches a text, and there’s a relationship between them, a conversation between the voice of the text and the potential for resonance with the reader; however, not all texts are specifically representative of the author, personally. In the case of a memoir, the reader enters the text, and that relationship, with the notion that it is also the author’s life in the text, is somehow personal, if vicarious. Of late, readers have sometimes been given the sort of warning that’s seen in cinema; notifications of disturbing content. In Marty Cain’s The Wound Is (Not) Real: A Memoir (Trembling Pillow 2022), the content warning also includes “Readers with photosensitive epilepsy should be aware that some of the linked videos (accessed through the QR codes) contain flashing lights”.  Since not many texts contain QR codes, the reader is also alerted to the potential for a non-traditional format for the work overall. While the book proclaims itself a memoir, this is not a prose-only chronology, nor is the work overtly prose, as some pieces are stream-of-consciousness, some are narrative prose, others are narrative poems, including a piece titled “Narrative Poem” (81).

      The work itself starts with a prologue that establishes the voice of the text as a Sibling Of A Disabled Person, but the structural arc of this prologue involves memory overall, makes overt allusion to Joe Brainard’s “I Remember” as an architecture for fragments that introduce character and setting. The prologue ends with a QR code. Thus, the reader is alerted to graphic elements in the text: the use of upper case, Selby-like run on sentencing, bold face, spatial elements and sometimes purely graphic use of the pound and asterisk keys. To their credit, the publisher includes these elements, but whether the use of a single old English font letter for the start of pieces is the editor’s or author’s decision as a helpful reading marker only adds to the subtle aesthetics of this work.

     Such a work as this is as much meditation as memoir, memory filtered through the experiences of life. Lest the reader too readily dismiss the text as merely some post-punk hybrid, “Wordsworth Poem” begins with three paragraphs in a type of high-wire standard critical thought that then becomes a swan dive into memory. The transition here, debating Wordsworth’s 

choice of poetic form, makes the observation “And form is a feeling/ // And form is a garment/ //

And in my mind, I return to the clothes” (23), peeks into the core structure of this work: each piece’s structure is chosen to clothe the thesis, the work is dressed in prose or QR codes, each episode has a Look.

     These devices seem intended to a accentuate the physical deeds done in this work. In “Kids of The Black Hole, Part II”, which is presented as prose stanzas, the first stanza includes “He’s done it before. He’s hatch-marked his arms and shown me the scars” (35), one of the text’s many references to self-harm. The piece continues with “We’d kissed before. He’s asked me to blow him. I’s said no. I turned off the light. I don’t think I spoke”, but then continues as a meditation between trauma and art “It feels good and it hurts”. It is here that the repetitive use of wound in this work overall is given the thesis of “The wound is not real / // This, too, is perhaps a common sentiment for victims of abuse” (37). What the reader experiences is a clearly curated collection of violent memories at a rather gentle remove.

    As a literary work, Cain’s book is energetic. The work has a distinctive auditory quality that makes it true to its contemporary copyright. And while the book overtly self-identifies as memoir, “This is still my confessional poem” (36) also seems traditionally apt. The reader in search of inspo-porn memoir will find few soft feelings here.  The dozen or so small press zines that published these pieces prior to their collection here speaks to our current culture yen for such exposures of intimate darkness. It is then for each reader to depart the work in confrontation with their own landscape, be their experience one of horror or of catharsis. 

 

    Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.