Seneca ReviewReviews
Reviews
On Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson’s Rendered Paradise
Apogee Press | 2024
reviewed by rob mclennan
I’m fascinated by the approach that well-published California poets and long-time pals Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson took for their collaborative Rendered Paradise (2024). The collection is composed as a triptych of sections of short poems: the first, “Cause for Deciphering: after Vivian Maier,” responds to the work of photographer Vivian Maier (1926-2009); the second, “A Very Small Gesture of Exhultation: poems for and from Agnes Martin,” responds to the work of painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004); and the third, “Gauze Blouse Over World Flesh: after Kiki Smith,” responds to the work of artist Kiki Smith (b. 1954). It is interesting that there is no obvious or overt suggestion as to how these two experienced writers approached their shared lyric, whether a call-and-response of phrases, sentences, stanzas or even poems, or whether a sequence of initial composition and alternating revision. There are certainly echoes of their individual works in these pieces, but nothing so overt to be able to distinguish who wrote what. As they write to close the opening poem of the second section:
If I repeated myself, the second, third, etc. time around,
it was as though I heard its voice. Each voice. Voices unequal. And
contesting or related. Until: a fabric, rippling. Tight
at its gut. What is unequal swathed in perfect. Voices conjoined
touch that darkness
to the unknown end. See how it breaks here
and recovers itself. A bit of blue.
Poets (and artists generally) have long engaged in the ekphrastic, and one could comprise a list of poets over the years who have responded solely to the work the infamously-reclusive Saskatchewan-born American painter Agnes Martin, each through very different approaches, even within and across the lyric. Recent examples alone might include Lawrence Giffin’s Untitled, 2004, Michael Trussler’s Rare Sighting of a Guillotine on the Savannah, Brian Teare’s recently reissued The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and through elements of Alison Calder’s Synaptic, as well as existing as a thread throughout Sina Queyras ongoing work. However their collaborative efforts were utilized, Dyckman and Robinson seem to approach the works of each artist as jumping-off points, exploring ways of seeing and responding to the works of three women artists, who themselves each defined new and fresh ways of seeing and responding. As Dyckman and Robinson write to open the first section, through the poem “[Man walking down city street past a series of / doors unattached to buildings; car leaving frame]”: “Something about a row of doors that marks the barrier between / one visible portion of the universe / and another. He’s not looking at heaven, / but who knows? Is heaven a shadow whose outline / is precise?” Dyckman and Robinson work to gather moments across an expanse, aware that they are examining depictions and perspectives through their own filters, responding to details from particular works by these three artists. “Rendered,” as the book’s title suggests, as in “shaped.” Through these poems, Dyckman and Robsinon offer, in certain ways, a photograph of a photograph, perhaps. “Seeing is an intimacy,” they write, to open “[Close up from behind on man and woman / holding hands],” “like the juxtaposition of plaid // with stripes.” For each section that surround their collaborative responses to a particular artist, Dyckman and Robinson appear to wrap and swirl each cluster of poems around a central core of thought, whether responding to Maier’s unique perspective of daily life, Martin’s shaped and sharp gestures, or Smith’s ability to see her subjects on their own terms. “Animal knowing is not more than mine,” they write, to end the Kiki Smith-influenced “Everywhere (double rabbits),” “or less / confused. As my eyes are able to deceive, / their sightlines are beyond each other’s reach.” The collaborative effort allow for a perspective and even a critique on these three artists’ works, one that becomes interesting for either someone aware or completely unaware of the source material. In a further poem from the opening section, they offer:
Held Hands
Two distinct limbs move closer to form
a perfect math, an arm against an arm,
skin on skin.
I am uncertain how I know they compose as one.
Texture hints at what it is to feel
the soft, bared summer, or maybe
still spring, that season when light can once more be caught.
Published 1/15/2025
Bio:
rob mclennan
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with the brilliant and utterly delightful poet and book conservator Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the CAA/Most Promising Writer in Canada under 30 Award in 1999, the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. He has published books with Talonbooks, The Mercury Press, Black Moss Press, New Star Books, Insomniac Press, Broken Jaw Press, Stride, Salmon Publishing and others, and his most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014), The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection A perimeter (New Star Books, 2016). Further poetry titles are forthcoming from Flat Singles Press and Salmon Publishing.