{"id":2825,"date":"2018-05-01T14:28:13","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T14:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=2825"},"modified":"2018-05-01T14:28:13","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T14:28:13","slug":"conjuring-gossamer-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/conjuring-gossamer-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"Conjuring Gossamer Ghosts"},"content":{"rendered":"

House of McQueen<\/em>, by Valerie Wallace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Four Way Books, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

66 pages, paper, $15.95<\/strong><\/p>\n

Winner, Four Way Books Intro Prize<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"cover<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I was seventeen, big-haired and blonde in 1980s Texas, I was invited to walk in a fashion show with other members of my high school drill team. We were cheap labor, and the local bridal and prom store needed pretty girls to parade the latest Gunne Sax gowns for a hospital fundraiser. Looking back, I\u2019m embarrassed. The fashion was about as forward as our mall\u2019s food court. Still, there was drama in it. A girl could imagine a bolder version of herself under all that lace, pouf, and pantyhose. I have since discarded the excesses of that era but hold on to a few prom dresses and the feeling of being transformed by fashion. I inhabit other personas on the page now and indulge in only the occasional Vogue<\/em>, but I\u2019m aware that the industry remains a tough club to break into. Occasionally, someone unexpected breaks in and ruffles fashion\u2019s feathers. In the 1990s, that someone was a young, English, working-class dropout named Alexander McQueen. This is all one needs to know to gain entry to poet Valerie Wallace\u2019s House of McQueen<\/em>, a debut collection of equally startling poems about the famed designer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wallace\u2014who teaches with the City Colleges of Chicago and works for the project Virtue, Happiness & The Meaning of Life at the University of Chicago\u2014presents her book as this spring\u2019s couture collection. There are so many different lines of entry into these poems: via fabric, gender, fairytale, class, and especially the life of the singular man. In \u201cAutobiography of Alexander McQueen,\u201d the poet gives voice to this man directly:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to weave a new fabric, but the loom doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Born in 1969, McQueen was the youngest child in a large family who quit school to apprentice at tailoring on Saville Row. Lee, as he was known to friends, had talent, and it gained him entrance to fashion school, where he caught the eye of influential doyennes and a voyeuristic, image-saturated society. At times Wallace lets the designer himself write the poems, taking phrases from his interviews and playing with form and function. \u201cJoyce & Lee\u201d is a touching erasure poem from a conversation between the designer and his mother.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rumored to have been abused by a brother-in-law, whom he later witnessed brutally beat his sister, McQueen said he wanted people to \u201cbe afraid\u201d of women wearing his designs. One can feel the fear in \u201cCharmed for Protection\u201d:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hood be cowled\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 for private thoughts<\/p>\n

Sleeves be lined\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 for smell of Night<\/p>\n

Let none harm you\u00a0\u00a0 Let none betray you<\/p>\n

Wrap yourself in no Spektral affliction<\/p>\n

Your Wound\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 your strength\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wild\u00a0\u00a0 wanted<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This air of fantasy is augmented by the fact that these poems take place across the pond in England, which itself lends an air of fantasy for American readers\u2014it is the birthplace of so many of our fairy tales. Skillfully woven throughout the collection is thematic, mythical imagery also seen in McQueen\u2019s collections, especially birds and mirrors. From \u201cMcQueen\u2019s Bop with the Interviewer\u201d:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Waif who needs rescuing<\/p>\n

isn\u2019t romance.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen naivete<\/p>\n

I know what can happen.<\/p>\n

Someone\u2019s life is burning<\/p>\n

from this world\u2019s brutal kiss.<\/p>\n

I am \u2502 you are<\/p>\n

The voyeur \u00a0the mirror.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The poems, however, never lose touch with the real world. Within Wallace\u2019s skillfully crafted poems we are in school, under the presser foot, discarded on the shop floor, almost literally threaded through the poems. \u201cBumsters,\u201d for instance, virtually unzips down the page. \u201cMcQueen Linen\u201d cleverly plays with white space and columns to mimic linen\u2019s loose weave. The poet\u2019s shrewd use of form means we arrive at the man through his medium. Wallace gives this poem space to breathe, and it can be approached either horizontally or vertically to elicit different meanings:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I design the shows\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 as stills If you look they tell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the whole story<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I find\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 no place for fear\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I show myself<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The body\u2019s \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 tried to tell you\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 it\u2019s intricate\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 altered<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perimeter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 what I see\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 our bodies\u2019 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 silver \/ dream<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In \u201c[When staggering down the runway wearing tartan over torn lace],\u201d the reader is even thrust into one of his radical shows:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When stocks edged with a Stuart ruff enclose the neck<\/p>\n

When obsolete colors, fulwe, sad, vernal, watchet<\/p>\n

When sleeveless torn satin & cutaway shorts<\/p>\n

When strewn with cigarette butts<\/p>\n

When a buried history of England & Scotland<\/p>\n

When a man yelling, Have I offended you then?<\/p>\n

When the body becomes everything it is given<\/p>\n

Throughout, the poems evoke experience, putting the reader into experiences otherwise inaccessible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The language that Wallace sometimes uses likewise may be unfamiliar (pronk, skirr, chthonic)\u2014made up or resurrected in a way that puts the reader in a strange and different realm. In addition, the poet revels in trying on a variety of forms, including contemporary free verse, slant sonnets and rhymes, shape poems, lists, acrostics and more. The poems also draw on an array of sources, from interviews, articles, biographies, and McQueen\u2019s own words. As a collection of new fashions, where every stitch and fabric can be examined, this collection of poems reveals many details that merit scrutiny, study, contemplation. Alexander McQueen himself was mysterious in life and even more so since his death\u2014and, like her subject, Wallace\u2019s work is not easily accessible. Beauty does not so much blossom here as blur. These are studied poems by an accomplished poet for a reader wanting more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At times the book feels like an intense research project into the man, except the traditional roles of male artist (albeit gay in this instance) and female muse are reversed. It is terribly exciting to read a series of poems about a man observed and interpreted by a woman, about sexualities that openly defy bifurcated norms. The reversal (maybe even obfuscation) elicits new avenues of exploring and questioning gender roles in fashion as well as poetry, and I can only hope that both worlds will make room for more of that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The collection comes at an important time for both English and American audiences following Brexit and the election of President Trump. Wallace\u2019s poems hold up a mirror to the reader, daring us to feel disgust or delight, to challenge the status quo. This is not unlike one of McQueen\u2019s most talked about show stunts for his collection Voss, where the audience was forced to stare at their own reflections from a giant, mirrored runway box whose walls dropped\u2014after an uncomfortable hour\u2014to reveal his models inside a makeshift psychiatric hospital. The poems are likewise in turns beautiful and confrontational and sometimes both at once.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I finished this collection feeling like a fortunate grown-up guest at Fashion Week, sitting stunned beside Anna Wintour in a front-row seat, thinking about how far I traveled to get there. Alexander McQueen\u2019s tragic death in 2010 means the designer is not alive to see his portrait painted on Wallace\u2019s page, but House of McQueen<\/em> is an artistic, imagined collaboration worthy of our attention. Readers will leave swaggered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wallace mirrors McQueen\u2019s urge to distort our expectations and stun the reader . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2826,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[605,606,607,608,609],"class_list":["post-2825","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-alexander-mcqueen","tag-fashion-industry","tag-four-way-books","tag-house-of-mcqueen","tag-valerie-wallace"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nConjuring Gossamer Ghosts - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/conjuring-gossamer-ghosts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conjuring Gossamer Ghosts - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wallace mirrors McQueen\u2019s urge to distort our expectations and stun the reader . . .\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/conjuring-gossamer-ghosts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2018\/04\/Wallace-Valerie-house-of-mcqueen-cover-horz.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"430\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"248\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/conjuring-gossamer-ghosts\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/conjuring-gossamer-ghosts\\\/\",\"name\":\"Conjuring Gossamer Ghosts - 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