Mr. &

by Jameson Fitzpatrick

These poems grapple with how romantic relationships, both gay and straight, are defined—and what we gain or lose from these definitions. The poems reflect on the experience not only of the poet, but also of wives throughout history, particularly as represented in classic literary texts, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Joan Didion.

Fitzpatrick’s “The Genius of Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With,” for example, is inspired by a paragraph in Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, while the fragments of the central poetry sequence, “Mr. &,” draw their language from the final chapters of books by Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Kate Chopin, Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, Sheila Heti, Susanna Kaysen, Sylvia Plath, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf. “The Definition Of” comprises various Google results for different manipulations of the phrase “marriage is,” and his poem “Vow” reimagines what is thought to be Anne Boleyn’s last letter to her husband Henry VIII, written while she was awaiting execution at the Tower of London.

Together, these poems constitute an extended meditation on what comes after the ampersand in the phrase that serves as the title of the book: “Mr. &.”

Genres: Poetry

38 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2018

About the author

Jameson Fitzpatrick holds a BA and an MFA from New York University, where she now teaches in the Expository Writing Program. Her poems have appeared in The American Reader, The Awl, The Literary Review, and Poetry, among elsewhere; she is also the author of a chapbook, Morrisroe: Erasures (89plus/LUMA Publications), which comprises 24 erasures of a single text by the artist Mark Morrisroe.

Reviews

[Jenna]

Fitzpatrick's second published chapbook of poems in the "found poetry" spectrum, Mr. &, ought to cement Fitzpatrick's reputation as someone who knows how to use the erasure form rather than letting himself be used by it. The form never feels like a lazy or arbitrary choice here, but always feels actively wrought, actively wielded. Each piece in this tightly cohesive, sparklingly wordplay-embroidered collection uses the mechanism of found poetry in its own highly individual way to explore the complex subjects of marriage, gender, queerness, femininity, submission/subversion, and female genius. My favorite piece was the first one, I suppose because it felt less open-ended than the others -- it had the decisiveness to transport me somewhere definite rather than leaving me sitting disoriented on the prickly haystack of my own thoughts -- but I quite liked the shiver of iron in the endings of the last two pieces as well.

More on this book: http://www.indolentbooks.com/mr-by-ja...

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really like this poet's work, but all of the work I've read and loved is not in this collection. This one's a bit experimental, to use an overused term. I'll eagerly await a collection with the poems I've really enjoyed from various lit mags and online sites.