In One Version of the Story

by Chuck Carlise

In One Version of the Story is a lyric exploration of the ways human beings confront desire, loss and absence by creating stories. Its narrative situation begins with from the French folk legend of l Inconnue de la Seine the unidentified young woman who drowned herself in Paris in the 1880s, and whose (unauthorized) death mask was eventually cast as the face of Resusci-Anne CPR training dummies but eventually the book encompasses a chronicle of personal loss, a history of photography, a study of the mechanics of breathing, and a solo climb to the rim of a Mediterranean volcano. The book is a hybrid of narrative history, lyric meditation, and journalistic investigation, often implicating the speaker (and reader) in the act of mythmaking itself. It is story-making itself which is interrogated here, however the book seeks not to recreate narratives, but rather to understand why they matter why and how we give them the meaning that we do."

120 pages, Paperback

Published October 18, 2016

Reviews

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The story is absence. The story vanishes" says the speaker in the collection's last poem. I am fascinated by how In One Version of the Story explores the enigma of disappearance, its utter pain, the loss, the urge to make it into a story, and how that ultimately always fails; and yet, how this urge can be the seat of creation, of inspiration, and a kind of solace. There is no narrative, though the speaker/reader may strive to find one. The collection's poetic sequences are proof and illustration of how limiting and distorting such a narrative would be. I loved to follow their splitting and braiding and to go back and forth between the strands.

[Michael Chin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chuck Carlise’s In One Version of the Story weaves between and through personal pain and worldly myths with such a palpable sense of grace and grit. Loved this book.