Clark\u2019s ability to harness dialogue in other people\u2019s voices is devastating, from this opening lover\u2019s shattered expectations, to the sexist police officer who compounds the trauma of a sexual assault by calling it \u201cecstatic, almost Bacchic<\/em>\u201d, to the mother\u2019s almost omniscient qualities, her digs and directions; \u201cThe person you think you love is just a figurehead.\u201d <\/em>Through these exchanges Clark arcs a full-bodied cast of characters: an evolution of lovers and partners, a devolution of their relationship with , a volution with the mother, and a revolution of the self.The occupation of the book is coupling, as the title Music for a Wedding <\/em>signals, but the unison is as much an internal one, as a romantic familial or cultural one. And in America today, coupling implies divorce, division, and wholescale rejection for about half of all partnerships.<\/p>\n Such changing and reshaping also reforms Clark\u2019s views on the socialized definition of coupling, shame, and satisfaction; relationship to physical place, especially the Midwest; moving from craving safety to creating it; and embodying sexuality and gender. The poem \u201cListening to \u2018Rolling in the Deep\u2019 for Twenty Hours Straight\u201d runs its fingers through all of these themes, leaving a wake in the psyche with the lines \u201cthe cornfield taught me how much\/ can be mistaken for the touch of a human.\u201d<\/p>\n The generosity of this collection\u2014from the opening epigraph to the closing poem, and every vulnerability in between\u2014would be necessary at any point in humanity, but is especially valuable in today\u2019s dire cultural tectonic uprisings and submergings. And Clark is well-versed , pun deliciously intended, from the Latin of Catullus to the measures of the Kinks, Whitney Houston and Adele’s power ballads, The Lonesome Sisters, G\u00e9rard Grisey, Weezer, and Derek and the Dominos.<\/p>\n Clark uses disarmingly contemporary language to address ageless crises of love, belonging, self, grief, fulfillment, desire, and safety. The result is an uncannily prophetic quality in both the unvarnished statements and complex images. There are heart-splitting moments of clarity: \u201cHey. Hey. Things\/ don\u2019t just get better after awhile\u201d in the opening section of the book;\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBeing away from what you know is the larger part of life,\u201d in the third section; and in the concluding section, \u201cwe do the right ritual.\/\/ The one in which metaphor stops being habit\/ and becomes real.\u201d There are also moments that prophesy equally well but through denser layers of language and syntax: \u201cher head on my pudendum\u201d\u2014a noun for external genitalia from the Latin verb to be ashamed\u2014, and the 6th section of \u201cEpethalian\u201d \u201cAfterparty<\/em>\u201d, \u201c(After which everyone\/ aside from the beloved\/ goes home.)(See pg. 37.)\u201d Wherein they literally, and metaphorically, burn it all down.<\/p>\n Music for a Wedding<\/em> is a journey from who we are told to be, through who we try to be, to who we delight in being. Fom epithalamion to antiepithalamion. From death as \u201cwithout you\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am unsalvageable,\/ my family is dead<\/em>. The funeral, \/\/ when it happens, is late and offensive\u201d to \u201cthe trick is to greet mortality with familiarity.\/\/ The trick is to plan the party in advance.\u201d There is grace as wide as a Midwestern field in these pages, like the \u201cParable\u201d poem set in the alcoholic, abusive father\u2019s house, where a metaphorically too-short leg is still directly praised: \u201cLeg,\/\/ I can love your shortcomings. Look at us as a set that walks.\u201d away from the hellacious \u201c\u201d the father lives inThe poem \u201cVigil\u201d is also full of grace: \u201cIt was metaphorical and a literal train ride\u201d at the end of the collection, and after a rightful accumulation of bitterness, grief, and frustration, here are \u201cnew daffodils,\/ old daffodils, don\u2019t tell me I can\u2019t\/ have flowers in my poem.\u201d<\/p>\n In an era when the world seems to find new ways to fall apart everyday, reading and writing poetry can seem \u201clate and offensive, ridiculous as a wedding cake.\u201d Other times \u201cit was beautiful if unncesssary\u201d, but we must not forget that there is a deep resistance in taking another\u2019s body into your own through the mindful, intentional consumption of language in servings over 280 characters, in cultivating empathy, in earning the destination of \u201cfinally, you have come to the place\/ that is bigger than loss\u201d, of being in a place wholly your own. Review by Alicia Marie Brandewie Lauren Clark\u2019s Music for a Wedding (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), selected by Vijay Seshadri as the Winner of the 2016 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry,confronts our fear that intimacy and vulnerability are too often both simpler and far more painful than we want to admit. In the book\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[56],"tags":[55],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3O6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14640,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14638\/revisions\/14640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-wordpress-0\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/03\/19123152\/img-6176.jpg\")
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