“The shape of a poem begins at the end of a gaze,” writes Jennifer Robertson.
While touring the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst (Massachusetts) last October, I had the great pleasure of meeting the poet Jennifer Robertson. She told me that her work as a poet was heavily inspired by Dickinson, so it was quite an emotional visit for her.
I was lucky to acquire one of just 500 copies of her book folie à deux. In preparation for this article, I was unable to find it listed on Amazon or Abebooks. It is, however, available for just $24 at the link printed below.
This is the debut collection of poems by Robertson, who is from India. In a word, it is stunning. I hope that the publisher brings this poetry to the attention of the Library of Congress, as I see the making of a future Poet Laureate here.
Several lines struck me as memorable. In the poem What I Write About When I Write About Bones, she says “When I read that a word has not become obsolete, the page becomes a cemetery.” For someone who deliberately uses and explores obsolete words, this resonated with me! In the very same poem, she instructs us to “Write for squirrels. They know all about buts and waywardness in language…Squirrels are poets in disguise.” I will tell this to my pet squirrel, who lives in a tree in my backyard.
Robertson ends the poem Pots, Pans and Petals thus: Beep. Beep, beep./I wonder if that is my conscience or the microwave.” This could be construed as a cute joke, but in the context of the poem it is clearly laden with significance.
She alludes several times to film and film-makers. There is an artistic poem Klimt’s Adele Dusts the Gold Off Her Alabaster Skin. If you have to ask who Klimt or Adele are, I can only say the word philistine comes to mind, and as the poem also relies on your knowledge of Faye Wong, the 1994 film Chungking Express, and Kafka, you better know your stuff!). She writes about the film Eyes Wide Shut: “Kubrick fills the bathroom with a hazy, dreamy blue; almost an irreverent stream of lapis-lazuli but she is all yellow.” The visage of an irreverent stream of anything stretches the mind, never mind the lapis. Great use of vocabulary (Robertson admits in another poem that she has “an addiction to words.”). You can’t read these poems except with eyes wide open, and beware as well: “My poems have two doors and no exit.” Shades of Hotel California, but if you are trapped in that hotel, at least be prepared to have this book in your suitcase!
Robertson employs mathematical and optical elements in several poems. In one, sadness is measured in centimeters. In another, a guy “becomes an acute angle” and in another, “Dreams merge at a focal point when sleep is the fulcrum.”
Like poetry printed centuries ago, this book includes some notes to explain what is meant. This is most helpful as one poem includes a word in Urdu, and another gives the name of an ancient Sanskrit treatise on grammar.
The Final Finding of the Sea begins with a quote from an 1885 letter by Dickinson to an unknown recipient. “I approach this letter with unevenness,” Robertson opines, “hoping it will be understood.” One must approach these poems in the same way, studded as they are with filmic, mythic, and literary gems that are here for their beauty to be revealed by an astute reader.
Eclectic, unexpected and delightful, this collection of poems is a must-read.
folie à deux was printed in 2023 by Everybody Press, Brooklyn, NY
Photo of J. Robertson in the Emily Dickinson House is by C. Cunningham