{"id":3196,"date":"2018-10-15T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T08:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=3196"},"modified":"2018-10-15T08:00:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T08:00:26","slug":"revelation-and-resistance","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/revelation-and-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Revelation and Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Light of What Comes After<\/em> by Jen Town<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bauhan Publishing, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

96 pages, paperback, $16.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lately I have heard folks in positions of power tell young people to go in fear of irony, that irony is a hiding place for the chronically disengaged and disenchanted, that it signals a deep cynicism when what we need is earnest, active resistance in an increasingly hostile world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have a simple quibble with this: without irony there would be no poetry, and without poetry there is no resistance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Okay, maybe I am oversimplifying.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Maybe what I mean to say is, our language\u2014by its very nature\u2014is chock-full of contradiction, complication, subversion, and elision, but it is with language that we must communicate who we are and who we wish to be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is an irony here, and it is the poet\u2019s job to expose it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Irony, at its best, teases out the difficulties inherent in language and\u2014by extension\u2014in the self\u2019s formation. It is a subtle art and requires a deft hand. Jen Town has such a hand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve often been accused of being a latchkey with no latch,\u201d says the speaker in Town\u2019s poem \u201cSpun,\u201d which, like many in her award-winning debut collection The Light of What Comes After, <\/em>addresses the formation of identity through mediation and speculation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The I <\/em>of these poems is shaped in response to social and cultural expectations, creating inside itself a metaphysical window\u2014not to be confused with an emptiness, but rather an opportunity, an opening between representation and reality, like a \u201cspace in the air where the ballerina momentarily spun.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I say opportunity, <\/em>because Town\u2019s poems provide just that\u2014a new way of seeing, a slant <\/em>(to reference Dickinson, one of Town\u2019s foremothers) way of exploring a young woman\u2019s coming of age among books, movies, art\u2014from a well-intentioned but sheltered childhood, to the sometimes-hard truths of life as an American woman.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These ironies aggregate throughout the book, are pasted and layered across the self with decoupage artistry. There are accusations in poems \u201cShort Autobiography on Tiptoes\u201d (\u201cshe\u2019d been accused to of being too much and always \/ in earnest\u201d) and \u201cSpun\u201d (\u201cI\u2019ve often been accused of being a latchkey with no latch\u201d) as well as the consequences of growing up \u201cto believe \/ in the essential good\u201d (\u201cShort Autobiography on Tiptoes\u201d).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, in The Light of What Comes After, <\/em>\u201cgoodness\u201d and \u201chappiness\u201d\u2014two touchstones of a virtuous, Midwestern upbringing\u2014are repeatedly turned over and re-examined, questioned, and prodded, as we see in the poem \u201cInvisible Self-Portraits in a Dark Room\u201d:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>I believe myself to be<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>a sympathetic character<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>but formed to what<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>purpose, I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even more interestingly, in the world of Town\u2019s poems, the self is not only created in the crucible of societal expectations but in the conventions of genre like autobiography, self-portrait, still life, romance, spy novel\u2014poetics the self has internalized and re-contextualized.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For example, in \u201cNeedles Piercing Cloth,\u201d Town writes,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>It was a world of d\u00e9colletage,<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>the diaphanous thrills<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>of forgetting\u2014lily skin<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>draped in spring and sugar<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>sifting through fingers\u2014pollen\u2019s<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>golden settling on footstool<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>and ottoman, pie rack<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>and ice box. A world of garden<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>walls aflame with bloom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is undeniable beauty in the configuration of these artifacts, in the positioning of sensual, musical language, but it is a scene without people. Then (emphasis mine),<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>and yet: <\/em>inside we drifted like<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>smoked bees in a silence<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>through which clocks<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>ticked, sound of silver needles<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>piercing cloth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The latent violence becomes palpable via domesticity\u2014the surface belies an underground tension. We peer beneath the female-centric, superficial benevolence (needlepoint and d\u00e9colletage) to see the worry underneath, a technique found again in \u201cCharming,\u201d which opens with, \u201cHer father says You\u2019re living in a fairy tale,\u201d <\/em>and ends with:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u2026 She gathers flowers by<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>the roadside, weaves them into a rope for her escape. They shrivel and<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>curl up into tiny fists, a string of fists that blow apart in the wind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These are poems that are at once in love with language and at odds with it\u2014as we all must be. Town\u2019s ear for prosody is playful, physical. Her lines are masterful. But what I love most about Town\u2019s poetry is its subtlety. The poems\u2019 balance between despair and delight is so elegantly calibrated, so delicately fashioned, so utterly attentive to the small fractures, fissures, disappointments, and fleeting joys of adulthood, that one could say Town\u2019s sensitivity to language is preternatural and that her nuanced, delightfully subversive voice is a revelation. So, let me say it: Town\u2019s The Light of What Comes After <\/em>is a revelation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She\u2014like many of us\u2014was a girl who grew up to be a woman, both charmed by the trimmings and trappings of her gender\u2019s norms and highly critical of them. She faces the gaps between expectations and realities with a wry wit and realizes\u2014rightly so\u2014that who we think we are and who others think we are\u2014creates a tension rife with both humor and pain. This is resistance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Town\u2019s poems aren\u2019t for the faint-hearted, though they are very much the product of a delicate sensibility.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh, the irony!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without irony there would be no poetry, and without poetry there is no resistance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3209,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[6,882,883,884,885],"class_list":["post-3196","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-jen-town","tag-lesley-jenike","tag-review-of-the-light-of-what-comes-after","tag-the-light-of-what-comes-after"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRevelation and Resistance - 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\/revelation-and-resistance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Revelation and Resistance - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Without irony there would be no poetry, and without poetry there is no resistance.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/revelation-and-resistance\/\" \/>\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\/10\/Cover-detail-of-The-Light-of-What-Comes-After-by-Jen-Town.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"185\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"131\" \/>\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=\"5 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\\\/revelation-and-resistance\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/revelation-and-resistance\\\/\",\"name\":\"Revelation and Resistance - 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