Imaginary Vessels

by Paisley Rekdal, Andrea Modica (Photographer)

"Compelling, appealing, cinematic . . . Rekdal refreshes the meaning and the image of being displaced in this world." — The Boston Globe "Rekdal's work deeply satisfies, for it witnesses and wonders over the necessary struggles of human awareness and being." — Rain Taxi "In acknowledging the disappointing facts of our existence and singing her way into its amazement, she has created poetry that lives alongside the misery we sometimes witness—and sometimes cause." — Slate Paisley Rekdal questions how identity and being inhabit metaphorical and personified "vessels," from blown glass and soap bubbles to skulls unearthed at the Colorado State Mental Institution. Whether writing short lyrics or a sonnet sequence celebrating Mae West, Rekdal's intellectually inquisitive and carefully researched poems delight in sound, meter, and head-on engagement. Illustrated with twelve Andrea Modica photographs. From "You're": Vague as fog and turnip—hipped, a creel of eels
that slithers in stains. Dirty slate, you're
Diamond Lil. She's you, you say. You're her. She's I. O
Mae, fifth grade, we dressed in feathers and our mothers' slit
pink slips, dipped into your schema and your accent,
aspiring (like you) to be able to order coffee and have it
sound like filth . . . Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of poetry, a book of personal essays, and a mixed media book of photography, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She lives in Salt Lake City and teaches at the University of Utah.

Genres: Poetry

119 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2016

About the author

Rekdal grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese American mother and a Norwegian father. She earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of the poetry collections A Crash of Rhinos (2000), Six Girls Without Pants (2002), and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (2007) as well as the book of essays The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In (2000).

In reviewing The Invention of the Kaleidoscope for Barn Owl Review, Jay Robinson observed that it’s “the razor’s edge that always accompanies eros that makes the poems of Paisley Rekdal fresh, intense and ultimately irresistible.” Rekdal’s work grapples with issues of race, sexuality, myth, and identity while often referencing contemporary culture.

Rekdal has been honored with a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship to South Korea. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006) and the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Rekdal teaches at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[Simeon Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Micro-blurb: a lascivious apology tied in a Möbius strip with memento mori.

[navu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think the overall conceit of the collection was for me—unfortunately some of the poems read like passionless homework responses—but can’t deny the poet’s skill with language. the really incredible “baucis and philemon” took this book from 3 to 4 stars for me. I just wish there had been more poems with that one’s emotional power and intimacy.

[Aaron Cance · Rating 5 out of 5]

It occasionally becomes necessary to step back from the unadulterated pleasures of the actual reading of poetry to pause to take into consideration just what it is that makes good poetry good. Whether this takes place in a classroom, an online chat, or a backyard discussion with a couple friends over some good wine, I default, almost without exception, to the philosophy of poetry provided by William Wordsworth in his 1800 preface to Lyrical Ballads because very few of the arguments made about poetry since have rung as surely and truly as his. The job of the poet, Wordsworth writes, is to “choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect,” the end result of which is that these “incidents and situations” might “more easily be comprehended, and are more durable; and lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.”

In a luminescent prose, Paisley Rekdal’s fifth collection of poetry, Imaginary Vessels, explores a broad assortment of both the anticipated and most unexpected spaces in life, prying open their containers like oysters, using language as her blade, for our consideration, thought, and pleasure. Less physically grounded than her previous collection, Animal Eye, the contrasting flashes of beauty and violence found in the poetry collected in Imaginary Vessels remind the reader that the spaces that we notice, the spaces that we create, the spaces that we discover, the spaces we occupy, both invite and defy articulation. They are identifiable, yet resist definition.

Rekdal’s efforts to consider, and understand, these spaces and their containers reach a dark and intimate crescendo in the fourth section of the book, “Shooting the Skulls: A Wartime Devotional,” in which she offers verse to accompany a series of photographs by artist Andrea Modica. Modica’s gallery of photographs displays a series of anonymous human skulls (of hundreds) discovered buried in the grounds of The Colorado Mental Heath Institute. Where Modica’s photography arrestingly captures the broken contours and unavoidable physicality of the skulls, Rekdal’s poetry seems to seek their missing souls, the flash of life that, once present in these housings, has long left. The skulls are empty houses, abandoned by their occupants, and narratives of the shocking and violent lives of the patients at the Institute, a microcosmic reflection, in general, of the Stygian mysteries of the human condition and, more specifically, of our willingness to inflict violence upon one another.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lovely poetry book. As an anthropologist I found the photographic essays and attached poetry a beautiful and soulful way of reestablishing connection with the bones we see as shells of once-life.

[Bekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paisley Rekdal stunned me out of the gate, and I couldn't help but to buy and read "Imaginary Vessels" after encountering excerpts of poems from this book. As Rekdal delves into the idea of things that are meant to hold other things, she simultaneously explores the hugest and most abstract part of our lives which does this, which are our relationships with other people. Rekdal's recurring motif of mother-daughter and parent-child relationship brings her abstract concepts crashing into reality in a way that is poignant and emotionally powerful, most especially to anyone who has experienced turmoil of some kind in these forms of relationships. Rekdal's range throughout this poetry book is also impressive- at times she delves into macabre containers and vessels, such as human skulls, and at times she lightheartedly utilizes her way with words to dance around complicated abstract topics in a graceful and entertaining way. Her ability to consolidate multiple forms of subject material into one volume is impressive and engaging. I have a preference for creative nonfiction in writing, and this book further fueled my love for the genre, reminding me of works such as "The Death of Everything Even New York City" by Rachel Zucker. Rekdal possesses the ability to spin the ordinary into the abstract, and her book remains engaging and thought-provoking and raw as she accomplishes this, which I found to be as emotionally powerful as it was just genuinely impressive. These vignettes into Rekdal's mind and life open doors to see into our own and to understand ourselves better as we watch her follow the thoughts racing through her head. Her ability to order the chaos of the world and mind is incredible and incredibly touching.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read another Paisley Rekdal volume. This one is substantial, and feels as though there are perhaps too many avenues explored. I didn't connect with the Mae West series (which should have been its own chapbook perhaps?), or many of the poems in the final part. But I really dig the way she approached a travel experience in "Murano," the respect the speaker feels for the hard-working mussel in "Vessels," and the tribute to and grief for an old dog in "Once." I also admire the way she attempts eulogies for the cast-off dead in the skull photo series. Favorite poems in that series are:

F20: Male, 29 Years Old
C18: Male, 36 Years Old
Portrait of E20: Female, 32 Years Old
Portrait of B4: Female, 34 Years Old

p.s. I've started feeling weird about star-rating poetry books in particular. Who am I to light up only so many stars? But, I give this collection 3.5 stars, only to help me remember that I preferred Animal Eye to this volume, and to give an at-a-glance opinion when I look back through the books I've read.

[Emily Shearer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I've had enough of persona poems, be they Mae West, heroines of Greek tragedy, my own, maybe it's because the photos of the unearthed skulls were more interesting than the poems about them, maybe because the devotional at ground zero wasn't raw enough, maybe because Paisley herself wasn't nice enough when I met her at a cocktail hour, but these poems did not "deeply satisfy" me as they did the reviewers over at Rain Taxi. Here's the one star though, and god, is it a beaut.

from "A Peacock in a Cage"

. . . The party can hold its liquor
only so long, as we can maintain faith that requires us
to keep two contradictions alive at once, like day
and night tucked into the same sunset or the sudden
hatreds ignited by love: the patience
with which we hold still for the camera, believing
it will shore up time, and knowing it won't.

[coco's reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Nightingale last winter and enjoying it, I borrowed Imaginary Vessels from a friend. I definitely preferred the newest of Rekdal's poetry collections, but this was also good and had many stand-outs. The chapter dedicated to skulls and the narrative poems were some of my favorites.

I'm writing the story of a life. Listen:
It's about a girl who lost her reputation. And never missed it.

Perhaps the skulls prefer
a lack of name as, scrubbed of self and skin,
they're trauma's best witnesses: fused
by time and pain to one crisis, never
to be separated. Lost as men, they become event.
In this, they achieve a terrible transcendence.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

23/31

There is a lot happening in this book--from a Mae West sonnet sequence to poems inspired by skulls unearthed from the grounds of the Colorado State Mental Health Institute, from Thomas Jefferson’s interior decorating to a consideration of Elizabeth Bishop’s famous poem “At the Fishhouses.” Paisley Rekdal reaches far and wide, and lord, she made me love “A Peacock in a Cage.”

#SealeyChallenge #Paisley Rekdal

From “A Peacock in a Cage”

“... The way a car inhales the gas
containing bones of dissolved dinosaurs
and the cheese breeds mold to heal the cut that holds
the hurt cradled inside the body, the blood
thick with the trace of all things
we might yet express or become, such as
the mathlete or music lover, who holds first
one note and then the next inside her ear.”

[Steven Peck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite poetry books and one I will return to often. The poems are gorgeously crafted, insightful, and a delight to read. They range from being fun to profound. The mediations on a collection of skulls excavated from an insane asylum (with photos of the skulls on which each mediation is based) were eerie and beautiful, provoking a complex reaction in me that played with memory and and thoughts on my place and duration in the world. The entire work is original and engaging. Don't miss it.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rekdal is very much the cerebral poet (rather than a more visceral/emotional one), which, for me, at times makes it hard to connect. However, she is so smart, and her topics, her gaze, cover such a wide an interesting range, that it will be worth your effort to seek this volume out and spend some time with it.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would have given this collection 5 stars based on the Mae West section alone ("Mae knows wit's a waste on those who think a woman is a sink of mind.") Or the section of poems based on photos of skulls found on the grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute. But there's plenty more beyond those. One of my favorite collections in years.

[Tova · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - read as part of Booktube-a-thon. This completes my challenges for read a book in one day, read a book entirely outside and read a book you bought because of the cover. It is also my second book I've finished for this read-a-thon.

My favorite line was: "don't be a noodle." Mini rtc

[Lisa Hase-Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and deeply fascinating. From Mae West to portraits of craniums found beneath a mental institution, these poems explore a wide range of identities and personas. I expect I will return to this collection again and again.

[aya · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5?

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite is the "Devotional" on page 85.

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exquisite, delicate creations.

I especially loved the one with empathy for oysters. Obviously.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning and ending of this book were wonderful but I somewhat lost interest during the middle. Still excited to read more by her, though.

[Anna Leahy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this collection a lot. Paisley Rekdal's poetry makes me think and feel.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh the Mae West series!

"I'm writing the story of a life. Listen: It's about a girl who lost her reputation. And never missed it."

[silas denver melvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

felt this was trying to capture too many things at once

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review in Artists of Utah 15-Bytes http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/35783/

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection, though I must say that I preferred her last couple of books more.

That really just comes down to taste in subject matter, I think. Her recent books have felt more personal while this one is a bit more clinical and distant.

Still amazing poetry as always.