Crash's Law

by Karen Volkman

Winner of the 1995 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by Heather McHugh. Through myth, dream, and sensual detail, the poems in this remarkable first collection portray a hectic world plagued by a desire for psychic coherence. The book begins and ends in extremity: the opening poem, "Infernal," evokes the searing realm of an actual and metaphoric Miami, while the final poem, "New Heaven, New Earth," alludes to seeking a path through dense woods amid a blinding, obliterating blizzard. In their longing to define a set of terms for spiritual survival, these essentially lyric poems merge an evocation of contemporary consciousness with the oldest conventions of cry and song.

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[Christina M Rau]

The epigraph by Dickinson is quite fitting for Crash's Law. The poems contain punctuation reminiscent of Emily Dickinson's as well as similar striking images. They also have a lot of allusion to myth in a very accessible way. The drawback of cliche titles and some stale imagery took away from some of the richness. Then I got to "Persephone At Home" and fell in love with the rest of the collection. Volkman writes, "I straddle / my killer, my captor, my grief, my bane / and tear and take / the torn lip, the raked neck, the aching thighs, / that will remind me / through the long black morning / I am alive." If you're not shivering, you need to read that over and over until you get the courage behind it.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

The pointedness of these poems was pleasing, taking me into a deeper, undiscernable place. But I'm not sure I was able to surface from the poem with a solid sense of where they had taken me. Perhaps I am trying to gauge how much they invite me back for further consideration.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volkman is a fine poet with a welcome sense of humor and an often twisted sense of how to elucidate that darkness that slips through the cracks in everything nowadays. That this was her first book of poetry is impressive: it seethes with familiarity.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is her first book and it's pretty good but Spar is better.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius.

[Ginny · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few beautiful lines in this book, but they are often wrapped in vexing verse. There is a difference between poetry that is difficult because it is dense and therefore requires a lot of unpacking, and poetry that obfuscates, that uses language with a strange disregard for meaning. I found it frustrating, but this is poetry, and it is deeply personal and entirely subjective, and often as much (or more) fault in reader as in writer. I found less than half of these satisfying to read, but those that were, were very satisfying. I like her word choice but am not a fan of her use of enjambment.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crash’s Law is a good collection, but I had trouble getting past the two Dickinson quotes --- which overshadowed all of Volkman’s poems. (Emily can pack a punch.) The title of Volkman’s collection comes from Dickinson’s “Crumbling is not an instant's Act,” which is yet another marvel of compression and meaning. And then the snippet that prefaces the collection: “The Zeroes – taught us fire – Phosphorus -- / We learned to like the Fire.” Volkman succeeds to some extent in creating the necessary echoes from these lines (in particular, the poem “Combustion”), but usually they are as lines within poems. Too often I felt she was weighing herself down with various allusions (mythical, fairy tales), like in the poem “Reflections,” which wastes a wonderful line like “What good is a sky, I might have asked, if it will not give us new blue distance, if it will only throw our loss back at us, shabby lens,” with brooms and Circe and Calypso. Been there, read that. Then there are influences best to be avoided, such as Plath and her tulips – Volkman has “Gladioli,” but I know those “flared faces,” and that “gash of fire” from “Ariel.” Don’t get me wrong, Volkman has enormous potential, but this is a first collection with some unnecessary baggage that needs to be tossed.

[Colleen Coyne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some gorgeous moments, but not as strong as her other work...