The lineage of modern American poetry is now a century of voices, some of which have been levitated into the canon—the voices we find most anthologized, most taught to students. As scholars find perhaps marginalized voices from history and that work is seen anew, out of its time of creation, certain aspects of the canon gain in wider recognition. Our cultural sense of discovering marginalized voices and amplifying that work is familiar enough when the artist is dead; however, the living artist is a conundrum in the tempestuous weather of social expectation. Taboo topics, although the pillars of the American canon at a historically safe remove, challenge the humanity of us all.
What is taboo is a culture can vary, but globalization has homogenized differences into what is sometimes cute exploration—a new type of food, public pajamas; yet certain taboos seem entrenched in westernization and often invert previously revered social positions into ones of stigma; from wise elder to covid disposable. We do not discuss the covid disposable, and what history makes of this will not glow up the humanity of our current culture. We do not discuss the covid disposable even at cultural events, which exclude even as they publish photos of the very throngs that are the core of jeopardy. The covid disposable are the disabled and the not-yet-disabled, the most vulnerable among us, and their American voices ought not to be shunned now, as they too sing our canon.
Among those whom we now teach as our literary giants was Wallace Stevens, who has not been as readily cited as being as influential as other modernist poets; yet this influence is readily perceivable in the recent publication of Jennifer Ruth Jackson’s Domestic Bodies (Querencia 2023). Stevens himself did not bother with literary throngs and was recognized after years of work. Jackson’s acknowledgments page too shows years of work, with individual poems finding publication some ten years before collected publication. Such career trajectories are common enough in poetry, as in the arts overall; however, Jackson’s work resonates with aspects of Stevens’ work that are distinct. This resonance can be seen in the poems “Absentee Father” and “Those Who Inherit”, which begin, respectively, with “Pause, cut the applause off mid-cheer/And screams mod-screech like a bird of prey” (46) and “Come, hungry hippos, another of your ranks has died”(52) that has a metrical echo of Steven’s widely anthologized poem “Emperor of Ice Cream”. Jackson’s meter throughout this work has a musicality, a tendency towards line emphasis of the quadratic familiar in our culture.
Jackson employs the Objects of Americana, a path now traditional in modern poetry, and recognizable as American highways, family dinners, bathtubs. In this use of the prosaic, Jackson often allows the metaphor to become symbolic, the poetic delight of a tightly constructed collage, a moment of being privy to the internal experience of living the poem. Jackson is also overtly disabled in this text, and the juxtaposition of that taboo within the framework of an American life will certainly challenge any conditioned thinking. In the arc of the work, Jackson introduces us to disability both in sensual hints—as in “You On The Palate” begins with “Let me taste you again and discover/ (with this chemo mouth) what flavor” (36)—and the medical nightmare of disability “I’d Rather Be Dead Than In Your Shoes” (26). Furthermore, Jackson’s text centers an identity poem “The Word Is ‘Disabled’”, that begins with “Yes, I am that cripple with calloused/knees and suede-soft soles” (56). The fifth stanza refines this phrase to ‘I am that wheelchair, no name or gender/when you talk about the space I take.” While the identity becomes one of other to object, Jackson’s point is made through the subtleties of alliteration, rhyme, and other auditory repetitions.
This is a densely poetic work, well-constructed and well-worthy of inclusion in any scholarly consideration of Steven’s influence—intentional or not. In our era of challenges both to our curriculum and our personal health, Jackson’s work offers a well-crafted consideration from a point of view that has been held taboo for far too long.
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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.
