The Myth of the Simple Machines

by Laurel Snyder

The gorgeous simplicity of Laurel Snyder's language makes all the possibilities—and the impossibility—of living stand out starkly. Her machines are thought machines, memory machines, the machines of false and daily logic, and we recognize them all. And, of course, they don't work this time either, but Snyder has found the poignancy in this, and more than that, she has found its meaning. A startling and touching book. --Cole Swensen

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2007

About the author

Laurel Snyder is the author of six children's novels, "Orphan Island," "Seven Stories Up," "Bigger than a Bread Box," "Penny Dreadful," "Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess" and "Any Which Wall" (Random House) as well as many picture books, including "Charlie & Mouse," "The Forever Garden," "Swan, the life and dance of Anna Pavlova," and "Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher."

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Michener Fellow, she also writes books for grownups, and is the author of a book of poems, "The Myth of the Simple Machines" (No Tell Books) and a chapbook, "Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse (Burnside Review Press) and the editor of an anthology, "Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes" (Soft Skull Press).

Though Baltimore will always be her home, she now lives happily in Atlanta.

Reviews

[Laurel]

no shame in my 5 stars... it's my book. i better like it!

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review first appeared in MiPoesias magazine.

The Myth of the Simple Machines by Laurel Snyder - No Tell Books / 978-0-6151-6132-7 / 76pps

Separated into sections, the first, “The Machines” are dadaistic tremors of adolescence... “Here---a door to outside, but the girl/doesn’t face it, so you be the girl” and scarey ruminations of memories or premonitions. Either or both. Fable-ish. Surreal. Just the same. From “The Simple Machines” -

You’ll close your eyes, wave your arms
a little, but you’ll only find laughter.
In the tight hot room, your laugh won’t loosen
anything, not even the lid of a jar.

When the room echoes
and spits the laugh back,
all the glass in each window
will jump to the yard.

I picture “Alice In Wonderland”, running from the Queen, going nowhere but where she’s just been. An exquisite oroboros of mad surrender.
In “Paper Dolls”... Snyder appears to address the pain of social issues. The wanting to fit in and the need to be set apart.

Go ahead. Take scissors,
and with a snip, make a girl.

Might as well make many.
They’ll all look alike,

but some will hold fewer hands
than others.

These poems are frightening. Childlike nightmares or adult depression. In “Well: the Girl Who Falls”- I think of seasonal disorder. Gray clouds. Soggy, baren and heavy with dwelling.

The girl who falls
can’t swim, displaces

the water. What we call weather
is sometimes like this,

around us, and with us
inside everything. Winter.

Just who is the girl? How deep is this well? Will the rope reach her in time? Is this “The Lovely Bones” or “The Bell Jar”? Either makes my skin prickle.
Or, perhaps “The Perils of Pauline” would be more appropo, as with the poem “The Answer to the Puzzle”

When the girl falls
through the air from the top
of a very tall bulding,

she sees everything
rush past her in great detail
but with little promise.

Or perhaps this is metaphor for school? The rushing through the years, to be an adult, wiser, yet forlorn for not living through the past. It’s tantelizing reading. Like artwork, one can decipher and analyze to one’s contentment. The evasiveness certainly gives a leeway. Or maybe it’s as simple as the 2nd stanza -

The asnwer to the puzzle
is that things keep getting less lovely,
but more interesting.

In the second section, “Their Casings,” we age. Adult desparities are addressed and undressed. The loving of the left. The alone of a relationship.
Philosophical expressions of everyday for everyone.
The third chapette, “In Technology” is realization. A coming to terms. A knowing. Take “The Follies” and its profoundant “The thinner the magic, the sooner it tears” or “you can almost see/through anything if you peek.” The facade of life falls at her feet and she steps over it, reaches for a broom and sweeps it out the door.
In “Logos” she just disappears...

And in the white room
a man watches his hands
beat and bruise a thing.

.....and is rendered.
Final section, “At Rest” is. Peaceful. Sexual. Contented.
Snyder’s poems are like dreams. They float all misty and just on the tip of a tongue. You’ll get them but you won’t know for sure why.

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snyder's work is both fantastical and rooted in everyday experience. A magical perspective that pulls in aspects of fairy tales, confessionalism, and lyric imagery to create a fabulous collection I plan to return to over and over for its delightful perspectives.

From "Then Up--Shaken Morning"

Some light took shape, leaked onto earth,
onto sight, leaked onto trees. The house stood, ate the air
behind the steps, stretched, took all the wood and a window.

"A girl could live in a place like this."

While you might not wish to live in the oft-disturbing world of Snyder's poems, the voice of the poems' narrators is one that welcomes you, invites you to sit and listen to its tale.

read my full review at
http://rantsravesreviews.homestead.co...

[Jeannine]

It didn't surprise me that Laurel has become a successful children's book author, because this delightful book of poems is full of fanciful stories, narrating the life of "the girl." Some poems describe eerie dreams, others comment on mundane life and mundane desires (from "I Covet Everything I Own:" "I covet every/ gone year, every wet summer, every early supper/ on a citronella porch...I covet drunk and tired and quietly,/ you. I covet my own thighs last year.") All of the poems have a delicate melancholy, building up an imagistic daisy chain that collects fragments of memories, prophecy, faith and foreboding.

[Lacey]

I CAN'T WAIT TILL THIS BOOK COMES IN THE MAIL!!!