A
Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America
Recently, my
14-year-old sister was approached at the mall to see if she’d be interested in
working at Hollister, or Abercrombie and Fitch, or American Eagle. I can’t remember.
She’s that beautiful. And
with the mall’s lights all around her—I can only imagine.
Yet on Facebook, one of
her friends calls her a loser. More write, “I hate you.”
I wonder if Kanye knows
that these girls are experimenting. As with rum. As with skin, all the ways to
touch it.
My day at the mall
begins with a Wild Cherry ICEE and an Auntie Anne’ Original Pretzel. A craving.
I pass women who you
can tell are pregnant, and I know we all might be carrying daughters.
The mall is so quiet. The
outside of the Hollister looks like a tropical hut, like the teenage girls
should be sweating inside.
No one’s holding doors
for me yet, but they will as I take the shape of my child.
And if my child has a
vicious tongue, it will take shape lapping at my breast.
American poet Sarah Blake’s first collection is Mr. West (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015), a collection that “covers
the main events in superstar Kanye West’s life while also following the poet
during her pregnancy, a time she spent researching and writing these poems.
This book explores how we are drawn to celebrities—to their portrayal in the
media—and how we sometimes find great private meaning in another person’s
public story, even across lines of gender and race.” In Blake’s collection of
lyric meditations, the blend of her own personal threads against Kanye’s public
self are intriguing, and her pop culture commentaries allow the distraction
against her being able to dig further into what, at times, becomes a deeply
personal and revealing work. The book opens with the poem “‘Runaway’ Premiers
in Los Angeles on October 18, 2010,” that includes: “I am two months pregnant.
// Monday this premiere, Tuesday this article, Wednesday / my first ultrasound,
with my child’s boneless arms in motion.” The piece ends with the declaration: “The two of you, tied to this week in my life.”
The
bulk of Mr. West explores the public
details of Kanye West’s life and his career. Blake writes of Kanye’s public
declarations, his mother, Taylor Swift, his automobile accident, specific
performances, Hurricane Katrina and his infamous ego, even as she weaves in
details of her pregnancy alongside quantum physics, philosophy and notions of
fame. Writing seriously on pop culture, Blake’s poems attempt to enter into the
information of his life, writing: “Kanye, if only I could write a poem for you
and not about you.” One could easily make a comparison between Sarah Blake’s
first collection Mr. West and Philadelphia poet and editor Julia Bloch’s first
collection, Letters to Kelly Clarkson
(Sidebrow Books, 2012) [see my review of such here] (as well as works by Montreal poet David McGimpsey) for obvious reasons, as much as for the fact of
both books attempting to speak directly to their subject through poetry, and
through using literature to explore seriously a genre not often taken as
seriously as perhaps it should. As she writes in the poem “The Fallible Face”:
Kanye, you must have a
relationship with your reflection I can’t
understand.
To structure, to
surgery, to form.
in
the access to the face there is certainly also an access to the idea of God
How did they put you
together again?
How did you feel when
someone saw you who didn’t know
you had ever looked
like someone other
than yourself?
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