Book Review: Compendium by Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina Marie Darling
Compendium
Publisher: Cow Heavy Books
Reviewed by: Wil Hough
Kristina Marie Darling’s latest poetry collection is a paradox. At first, second, and even third reading Compendium came across to me as the disjointed renderings of a bizarre female not at all to the taste of this Dylan Thomas fan and his drunken verse. Upon further review, however, a pattern began to take form. It seemed to me Darling had posed a puzzle for her readers—a mystery novel in sparse verse. Her latest submission to the world of poetry reads as neither verse nor prose poem, but a marriage of the two… quickly followed by a divorce and deconstruction into a unique and strange construct beyond anything I have ever experienced or even imagined.
The collection is small, a mere chap book of 55 pages. And, even at that, a full half of Compendium is devoted to footnotes and explanation of terms. Small as it appears, however, it is voluminous in content. The collection cannot simply be read through and stuffed away on a shelf. It must be read over and over in order to pick up and connect the clues Darling has woven upon and between the lines. For that endeavor, the chap book size is perfect. Fitting comfortably in the wallet pocket of my jeans, I was able to keep it handy for study at every free moment, which was like being led, wandering about a haunted Victorian Mansion, by a lovely yet very proper lady. Was she quite mad? The rooms of the mansion framing recollections in a mind haunted by lost love? I’m still pondering the clues to her allure and what it means to me:
…a journey to the countryside, her descent into madness, and the jewelry box with its silver nameplate and tiny golden key.
“And before long," she whispered, "I’ll have famed a portrait of him for each room of the house.”
The portrait, like a letter, requires a subject. And only by considering the other, she thought, will I come to understand intention, its hazy yellow glow. Somewhere in the picture, a declaration. The door to the gallery groaning on its hinges.
Again the delicate clasp of her pearl earring. Room after room of paintings in their tiny wooden frames. A series of odes in a strange language.
I say “means to me” because the mystery concealed within would have different meanings for me than I would expect for you or anyone else. That is, after all, the true difference between poetry and rhymed essay, the latter telling us what to think whilst the former presents an image for us to interpret. Still, I struggled to even read the collection let alone understand it. Was Darling mad, cunningly obtuse, or incredibly gifted with a new style? Then a fellow poet smacked me upside the head with a single word clue: Jazz. “Isn’t this what we are doing in all the artistic disciplines?” she explained. Is there anything new under the sun besides how we twist what already is to suit our vision, making the foundation one’s own through improvisation?
Ah, yes, of course. Essay would be like a classically charted symphony from which many a genre finds its base. Such variations might be compared to rhymed verse in all its manifestations. Some easily comprehended by the masses (popular music); others more challenging to discern (Jazz), like Miles Davis blowing Bitches Brew with his back turned to the audience to demonstrate his contempt for popular opinion. I wondered, could it be that Darling, like Davis, was expressing the same contempt for her readers, turning her back metaphorically to our desire towards understanding her meaning? But further study of Compendium dismissed that idea. Like a master of jazz in word form, Darling keeps building variations upon each chord, deconstructing and modifying boundaries, seeing how far she can stretch her interpretation without it all descending into chaos. In Compendium, her style seems more like that of John Coltrane’s classic jazz interpretation of “My Favorite Things.”
Coltrane’s jazz interpretation of the popular tune from The Sound of Music begins with a straight up rendering of the basic melody, much as Darling begins Compendium with chapter previews, each short paragraph describing a specific object or moment in time. Even here there is mystery. Rather than being titled sequentially, all seven of these chapter previews are titled “Chapter One” as if each were meant as separate portals into seven entirely different realities rather than being related aspects of a single story line beginning with:
She unlocked the door and began wandering the empty rooms, her pearl earring still glistening beneath the nightstand.
The “Chapter Verses” are followed up with the next set of clues; as that of supporting characters in this mystery:
The Box: "One must never open the smallest compartment,” he explained.
The Lockets: “Really,” she would plead, “I don’t understand why we cannot just forget them.”
The Homage: “…one should not pass judgment until the instruments have been properly tuned.”
The Dress: Madeleine began by choosing the most somber dress she could, its dark green taffeta rustling through the halls.
The Elegy: She whispered to the Connoisseur, “One’s feet may not inhabit the shoe until a song of mourning has been sung.”
From here, Darling’s verse turns Concrete, as obtuse as anything Miles Davis might have blown, back turned to his audience. However, like that of Coltrane, Darling’s free-form verse is grounded to its introduction. As a result, the deconstructed verses morph into clues to what the mysterious lady of Compendium might be all about—further dots for us to connect.
The most somber green taffeta
Adrift
An elegy with starched shirts
The second half of Compendium is devoted to footnotes and explanations. Initially, I thought them to be condescending explanations of items mentioned in the preceding verses: lockets, footwear, architecture, and even a history of desire. With each new reading, however, I began to see these notes as subtle redirects, discovered poems designed to tease open Darling’s poetic moment just in case her readers might have lost perspective along the way—the same way Coltrane finishes his free association with a return to the basic theme. What had seemed at first a disappointingly short collection of confused verse has proved to be a tome to be solved somewhere beyond the intersection of parallel lines As Darling writes at the conclusion of her notes, “For the work to succeed, one must recognize the difference between life and art. In other words, partaking in a lush pastoral scene is not the same as observing it.”
I have been turning Compendium this way and that for weeks now without perceiving a hint to the end of it as yet. As to the meaning of it all, I will not venture to say. Even had I figured it out to my private satisfaction it would most certainly not conform to anyone else’s. I suggest you pick up a copy and work out your own solution to the mystery of Darling’s latest poetic offering, both the meaning of her verse and the unique style she has developed. She concludes the work with:
I have overtaken you.
Indeed!
Kristina Marie Darling is the author of Night Songs (Cold Wake Press, 2010) and the editor of narrative (dis)continuities: prose experiments by younger American writers (VOX Press, 2011). Her work appears in The Boston Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Colorado Review, New Letters, Gargoyle, and other journals. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Ragsdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as scholarships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Colgate Writers Conference. A graduate of Washington University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, she will soon pursue a doctorate in poetics at the University of Buffalo, the State University of New York.
Wil Hough is Poetry Editor and Graphics Editor for Rose & Thorn Journal.
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