meta-blogging: Underlife

Underlife by January Gill O'Neil

(Check out the other reviews on this Virtual Book Tour!)

In the introduction to January Gill O’Neil’s collection, Underlife, Natasha Trethewey writes about how, “with frank and plainspoken language, the poet transforms experience into a narrative of becoming.” I’m sure Natasha is a lovely person, but right now I’m really annoyed that she said exactly what I had planned to say, down to the words themselves: a narrative of becoming. Because that’s what this book is, a journey that examines stages of the poet’s life through several different angles, pushing the buttons of even more emotions, and extracting from the reader similarities that s/he might not have even been aware of possessing. (For me, considering that my life experience is probably about as different from O’Neil’s as one can get, I think the resonance I felt is an excellent indication of just how masterfully she tugs on those universal strings.)

The books is divided into four sections: “Early Memory”, “A True Story”, “The Ripe Time”, and “Underlife”. O’Neil first takes us step by step through her childhood, unlocking issues of race, gender, and identity from the first moments of the book. The first poem’s title, “Nothing Fancy”, is a modest self-designation that makes a point about how even what appears straightforward and uncomplicated can be beautiful and profound. (I love the self-descriptive line she uses, “I am a plum black garnish to the day.” Beautiful!) The second and third sections shift us slowly into adulthood, from meditations on the action of preparing food to the raw, unashamed glory of sex. Probably “The Ripe Time” is my favorite section in the book, as it shows the thoughts that can burst from the most mundane of events; I read the poem “Sugar” about twelve times, just reveling in its sound:

Each granule is a lost poem, an unanswerable wish
spinning on the edge of consciousness.
I say to the pots and pans: every human narrative
requires an act of nature.

Every smallest story is attractive if told in the right words, and O’Neil’s masterful exploration of the events throughout her life give a portrait that is as multifaceted as a jewel. Then we come to the last section, whose title, like that of the book, deserves some pondering. I’ll give you my interpretation: underlife is the foundation of who you are, the summation of memories and experience, heartbreaks and miracles, that provide a subtext sneaking along your feet. People see you, here and now, as you present yourself, but it takes a perceptive person–or a poet, to do the job for everyone–to turn that presentation inside-out, and show all the wiggly bits that inform how you got to this place. O’Neil’s identity as a poet pairs neatly with that as a mother (her website, after all, is Poet Mom), but just because she’s a mother doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about loss (“The Small Plans”), or anger (“Discipline”), or death (“For Terence”). And certainly, there are those moments of escape, as in “What Mommy Wants”:

I want a pair of Candie’s.
Make my legs curvy and dangerous.
I want to strut down the street
in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a halter top…

…and so on. It’s steamy and delicious and honest and I love it. But not only do these poems examine the facets of what goes into making the underlife of a person, they examine it from many different angles. When O’Neil explores her childhood, she devotes several poems to her parents, for better or for worse. One particularly powerful technique was to put two poems face-to-face showing her father at his best and his worst (if I’m reading things correctly), or two more with her mother at her most frustrated and her most ashamed. We see her mother imparting advice about womanhood and her mother working as a nurse, her father at the Pentagon and her father bored in his retirement. All of the pieces are equally important through this process: poet sees aspects of her parents, poet takes on or casts off those aspects, reader is given the stories behind those choices, reader will (hopefully) understand how the foundations of the poet have been built as a result.

These are just theories, though. There is so much rolling through the background here… if we link the title with the word “undergrowth” (and I think we can), I feel as though I’ve presented with forty-nine exotic birds and rodents and lizards drawn up from that tangle which can seem so deceptively simple, unknowable, and unimportant all at once. (Why focus on the brush if you’re looking at a tree?) Poems are fauna: some are more agreeable and cuddly, some are interesting in their angles, and some hurt to look at but you can’t tear yourself away. I admire O’Neil’s ability to populate this zoo of identity with race, and gender, and all the vicissitudes of life, and still make it all sing to the reader with her words. And related to that, I should point out that she’s also got some serious formalist chops when she allows them to show through: the abecadarian “Night Work” for her mother is one of the best in the collection, and I greatly enjoyed her villanelle “Tangerines” for her daughter:

You’ll grow up, grow older, my little bean
To tell me you just can’t help being a girl
Seems like yesterday you were in my dream
Last night I nibbled your feet like tangerines

Downright heartwarming!

I suggest that you visit January’s site and check out the recent YouTube video with readings from the collection; “How to Make a Crab Cake” has so much more oomph when read aloud. And then you can head on over to CavanKerry Press and consider spending a well-used sixteen clams for the book; if you haven’t been convinced yet, a) I can’t believe I didn’t convince you, and b) you should read the other reviewers that have added/will add their own lauds to the pile. In the meantime, perhaps you should take a look at the underlife of your own self; you may find something surprising.

(The tour has already stopped by Kelli Russell Agodon and Donna Vorreyer’s websites. Next up is Sarah J. Sloat on April 22, then Kimberlee Gerstmann on April 27, and finally Wanda McCollar on the 29th. Check it out!)