Fabulae

by Joy Katz

In Fabulae, Joy Katz interrogates the physical world, constructing a sensual and striking autobiography. She turns to the familiarity and strangeness of the female body, its surfaces and inner workings, often, although her subjects range from Thomas Jefferson to an Adam and Eve plagued with obsessive-compulsive disorder to the streets of New York’s diamond district. The poems, by turns funny and philosophical, point to how we suffer from desire: the danger, she writes, is that we might love the world “like heaven and be lost.” But they come back to delight in a flawed world especially the palpable beauty of words, and even the erotic shapes of the letterforms that make them up.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2002

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

—but I rose and the day
passed and it was dark when I walked the hallway
and found you, already asleep, turned from me
like an accidental photo—odd angle of sky,
a thumb, that minute
I decided to keep, and kept, but forgot. The back
of your head on its pillow, a gentle, intimate shape—
it was something, it was eternal.

[Mark Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the title suggests, stories are a central theme in this collection. Katz is especially skilled at taking a fresh approach to historical places, figures, and events. One especially memorable poem, "A Nation So Ignorant of Itself" deals with John Wesley Powell exploring the Grand Canyon, the experience itself and afterwards how terrible it must be to discuss what he has seen with others, that they can never see or understand. Other poems are incredibly location based, like "In the Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague" which focuses on a crowded cemetery where tombstones are placed on top of each other and look "like molars in a small jaw."

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Joy Katz's poem "Just a Second Ago" in a volume of Best American Poetry a year or so ago and it became one of my favorites. I'd have to dig it out to say precisely why but as I remember it was simply a moment of weird revelation, eerily familiar.
I'd hoped to read more of that in "Fabulae" but have to say I was disappointed. The poems are quite good, sure, but I didn't connect.
One of the best was the short poem "Abraham Considers," about Abraham about to sacrifice Issac.