What do you think?
Rate this book
The Face: A Haunting and Meditative Poetry Collection―Exploring the Dark Night of the Soul and the Reassembly of a Life
A haunting and inventive book length sequence of poems from the distinguished author of Study for the World's Body. The Face is both fiercely lyrical and intimately conversational. Coming to terms with the failure of a great love, the speaker descends into his own dark night of the soul. Here are poems that explore the drama of the shattered self in a variety of voices, calling on memory to speak and imagination to make beauty from the shards. Slowly, the speaker reassembles his life and again finds faith in himself and the world. These poems reveal a swirling cinematic poetry of visionary scope; meditative and confessional in some moments, ironic and playful in others. Deeply passionate and raw in its candour, The Face may be for this generation of poets what Lowell's Life Studies and Ashbery's Self–Portrait in a Convex Mirror were.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
36 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 15, 2020
I'm not sure what The Face is, but I wouldn't consider it a novella in verse. Is there a story here? Maybe the suggestion of one. Basically, the speaker is going on about "the cinematography of the soul" (24) and how some Hollywood producer is making a movie about his unimportant life. Throughout the book there are motifs of identity, the self, faces and masks, and references to actors and directors. We follow the speaker across Italy and the deserts of California, where not much happens except for some memories involving ex-lovers and the birth of his daughter. The idea itself is interesting—the absurdity of an average life being hyped into a Hollywood premiere is strange enough in itself, but then being forced to become an outside observer of your most intimate and banal moments...!
Unfortunately, the writing itself is not very compelling. Calling this "verse" is being extremely generous. There is no meter, no rhyme, and, with the exception of some unexpected diction, there's barely any poetic devices. The book consists of forty five mediocre prose poems. Ultimately, I found the exploration of the self to be pretty shallow. The worst offender is poem XVI, which repeats "Who am I? (Who was I; who will I be?)——" three times in nine lines (21). Am I supposed to think this is deep? Or poem XXVIII which lists types of masks for two and a half pages: "The mask reflecting/Fear. the desire for the ancient masks. The masks of Death, of Laughter./The masks of Fertility, of Fortune. The masks of Gods, & the Gods' own masks/Handed down to the lucky or the damned. Masked./My mask when I say, Listen to me. My mask, when I say, 'mask.' My mask/" Also, the dreaded "bougainvillea" appears on page 9, which is my own personal litmus test for a bad poet. Don't ask me why, but it's only been wrong once.
Poems that I liked:
"III," "IX."
=2/45 (4.44%) poems that I liked.
Unfortunately, the writing itself is not very compelling. Calling this "verse" is being extremely generous. There is no meter, no rhyme, and, with the exception of some unexpected diction, there's barely any poetic devices. The book consists of forty five mediocre prose poems. Ultimately, I found the exploration of the self to be pretty shallow. The worst offender is poem XVI, which repeats "Who am I? (Who was I; who will I be?)——" three times in nine lines (21). Am I supposed to think this is deep? Or poem XXVIII which lists types of masks for two and a half pages: "The mask reflecting/Fear. the desire for the ancient masks. The masks of Death, of Laughter./The masks of Fertility, of Fortune. The masks of Gods, & the Gods' own masks/Handed down to the lucky or the damned. Masked./My mask when I say, Listen to me. My mask, when I say, 'mask.' My mask/" Also, the dreaded "bougainvillea" appears on page 9, which is my own personal litmus test for a bad poet. Don't ask me why, but it's only been wrong once.
Poems that I liked:
"III," "IX."
=2/45 (4.44%) poems that I liked.
July 24, 2015
The Face strikes me as more a short story than a novella, and I am not entirely sure why it is described as "in verse," except that the author normally writes poetry, and what he writes here --be it poetry or prose-- is vivid, graphic, hip, jarring, allusive, concentrated, and intense.
The story line goes something like this: a man reflects upon the mirror of his life (his face) broken in shards at his feet or traced by searchlights across the Hollywood sky after the premiere of a movie made of his nonexistent but very rich experience on earth, which has been deeply . . . deeply . . . tied to the frustrating, delicious, ambiguous taste of YOU who have left him. Something like that.
The pleasure of the book lies in the acrobatic slithering of the writing across the face of Italy, noir movies, a California childhood, and towards the end, a giveaway mention of experiences in the dimension of lit (I'll return to this in a moment). Reading it reminded me of Pynchon, Bolaño, Rushdie and William Gass. That's good company. Pynchnon, Bolaño and Rushdie for the over-the-top fascination with the culture of things, references, theories, and implicit self-mockery. Gass for the better spells of moderated lyricism.
But still, this volume (coming back to lit again) has a borrowed feeling about it, all the right shots of Italy, gorgeous memories of girlfriends, and references to Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum. These are more or less exactly what a thin layer of recent culture, be it hip or cool or up or down, would hold dear . . . what a hothouse -bred, super-grade MFA writer would whip out to mystify and outrun his readers . . . what an autobiographer would offer as a non-life because all of it, really, is a kind of nothing, simile instead of substance, wisecracks instead of wisdom.
Where the author himself stands in all this, I am not sure. This is a droll book, for sure. As they used to say (and I don't know if they still say it), it is on to itself, it doesn't let itself get away with its feints and tricks. But again, the self-mockery does not feel real; it feels hyped--talent too much in love with its gift for rendering emptiness, dead ends, and the experience of traveling all over the world and getting nowhere.
The story line goes something like this: a man reflects upon the mirror of his life (his face) broken in shards at his feet or traced by searchlights across the Hollywood sky after the premiere of a movie made of his nonexistent but very rich experience on earth, which has been deeply . . . deeply . . . tied to the frustrating, delicious, ambiguous taste of YOU who have left him. Something like that.
The pleasure of the book lies in the acrobatic slithering of the writing across the face of Italy, noir movies, a California childhood, and towards the end, a giveaway mention of experiences in the dimension of lit (I'll return to this in a moment). Reading it reminded me of Pynchon, Bolaño, Rushdie and William Gass. That's good company. Pynchnon, Bolaño and Rushdie for the over-the-top fascination with the culture of things, references, theories, and implicit self-mockery. Gass for the better spells of moderated lyricism.
But still, this volume (coming back to lit again) has a borrowed feeling about it, all the right shots of Italy, gorgeous memories of girlfriends, and references to Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum. These are more or less exactly what a thin layer of recent culture, be it hip or cool or up or down, would hold dear . . . what a hothouse -bred, super-grade MFA writer would whip out to mystify and outrun his readers . . . what an autobiographer would offer as a non-life because all of it, really, is a kind of nothing, simile instead of substance, wisecracks instead of wisdom.
Where the author himself stands in all this, I am not sure. This is a droll book, for sure. As they used to say (and I don't know if they still say it), it is on to itself, it doesn't let itself get away with its feints and tricks. But again, the self-mockery does not feel real; it feels hyped--talent too much in love with its gift for rendering emptiness, dead ends, and the experience of traveling all over the world and getting nowhere.
June 30, 2020
My ex bought this book for me 3-4 years ago. At the time, I was pleasantly surprised by the obscurity of what they chose (a poet neither of us had ever heard of), but also a bit confused as to why this. I tried to read it a few times, but I never got very far. Other books on my list took precedence. Looking back now, I think I was unable (or unwilling) to make sense of the overarching narrative across poems: a love falling apart. Or maybe I am manufacturing that explanation now. Maybe my newfound appreciation of it is simply nostalgia or an attempt to rewrite the past. I also have an older copy, with notes written in it from the past owner, which made it feel loved and worn-in.
Some favorite lines:
"We both undo the loose belts of / Our shadows, our trench coats, our bodies, here with you... / It's really never boring. Not today, no, and not even before yesterday."
"I didn't leave all that, all that / left me."
"Somebody says, I know you as I know myself, because loneliness / and your mouth are both such cruel mirrors."
Overall, I like this book more than I otherwise would because of my personal connection to it, i.e. how I got it as a gift and how I read my own past relationship into it. I'm not sure I would've liked it otherwise, as the poetry style isn't what I normally gravitate toward and in some plays strays into over-philosophizing or self-pity. But it is a good read, and I did like it more than expected.
Some favorite lines:
"We both undo the loose belts of / Our shadows, our trench coats, our bodies, here with you... / It's really never boring. Not today, no, and not even before yesterday."
"I didn't leave all that, all that / left me."
"Somebody says, I know you as I know myself, because loneliness / and your mouth are both such cruel mirrors."
Overall, I like this book more than I otherwise would because of my personal connection to it, i.e. how I got it as a gift and how I read my own past relationship into it. I'm not sure I would've liked it otherwise, as the poetry style isn't what I normally gravitate toward and in some plays strays into over-philosophizing or self-pity. But it is a good read, and I did like it more than expected.
November 17, 2013
The poems themselves were, for the most part, okay. A few were even good. However, I was most disappointed because this was not, really, a novella in verse. I was looking forward to something really good and unusual; instead, what I read was more of the same old, same old, with a few of the poems more closely linked than normal. I was hoping this would be, at least in feel, something similar to Basho. Such a disappointment.
April 16, 2011
Impressive, but not really my cup of tea (at the moment) from a content perspective. From a formal perspective, I guess I look for more "verse" in my verse novels.
December 15, 2015
Much of it was hard to get into, but definitely worth the read for poems XXVII, XXX, and XXXVIII.
February 12, 2015
I only began to realize near the end how delicately and gorgeously crafted this little "Novella in Verse" really was...It crept up on me slowly. St. John's writing is lush, immaculate, dazzling!!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews