Proxies

Starred review from February 22, 2016
The 25 essays in this collection from poet Blanchfield (A Several World) are small, highly polished jewels that together form an intricate mosaic. Giving himself the project of following a thought to its uncomfortable edges, in each entry Blanchfield picks a subject—foot washing, authorship, owls—and examines it from several angles until the connection between metaphysical principle and lived experience suddenly crystallizes, often producing an analogy as surprising as it is lovely. Blanchfield will typically betray a glimpse of erudition—a reference to cult cinema, Greek tragedy, or Noam Chomsky—alongside raw confession, balancing “a poetics of impersonality” with “disinhibited autobiography.” Thus, the billiards term “leave” proves connected to his father’s departure, a meditation on ingénues extends to his experience of 9/11, and the story of a dog bite becomes the story of his coming out. The themes of secrets and concealment pervade the collection, as does a “spellbound trade in vulnerability and openheartedness” conjured by Blanchfield’s prose style, with its catch-and-release rhythm—sometimes lyrical, sometimes barbed. The concluding essay “Correction,” which fills in or corrects details for the other selections, offers its own tribute to the processes by which we construct meaning—the real subject of this elegant and astonishing book.

February 1, 2016
A prizewinning poet confronts the challenges of creative nonfiction and the struggles of his career in a collection of high-concept, densely packed essays. Both the title and the concept require explanation. As Blanchfield (A Several World, 2014, etc.) explains in the opening "Note," "a proxy in one sense is a position: a stand-in, an agent, an avatar, a functionary." It might provide an approximation of an identity, as many of these essays that verge on memoir do, yet it is never exactly the same thing. The essays also offer approximations of sorts, as the author appropriates the concepts and words of others, sometimes in paraphrase, sometimes in direct quote--though he acknowledges, "I decided on a total suppression of recourse to other authoritative sources. I wrote these essays with the internet off." In other words, he wrote from memory, another dimension of identity, and only afterward checked what he had written against the sources, resulting in a final section titled "Correction," which, at 20 pages, is longer than any of the essays. Following each essay title is the same subhead, "Permitting Shame, Error and Guilt, Myself the Single Source." Since the author organizes the essays in the order written, loosely following a chronological progression through his life, he suggests, "whatever development can be tracked may correspond to what might be called a self. They are not the same thing. This is a book braver than I am." Blanchfield describes himself as "a poet's poet" who has cobbled together a living through adjunct and visiting poet teaching assignments. His homosexuality caused a rift with his fundamentalist mother, with whom he had been very close, and the broken marriage that bore him had him take a new surname (and identity?) when his stepfather adopted him. He writes plenty about his sexual proclivities and relationships, including the longest and latest one with a former student, but even more about the essence of poetry and the relationship between writer and reader. Often illuminating and occasionally impenetrable.

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