Review: Susan Rich
On Blue Atlas by Susan Rich
by Tyler Truman Julian
Susan Rich’s newest collection, Blue Atlas, is a complicated work that artfully blends the personal and the political, avoiding didacticism to create a timely narrative that explores the themes of choice and liberation. Where many poets wax romantic or end up preaching, Rich has instead crafted a speaker who leaves room for reader interpretation and who also asserts herself. Rich adeptly transitions between experimental and structured forms, highlighting the speaker’s evolving and solidifying self-conception. When Rich’s speaker declares, “I’ve always desired a different life than the one I am living,” the reader is compelled to believe her. Yet, this same woman can also assert she is “the proud ‘I’ that does not apologize, / the ‘I’ that no one holds by the throat” (“From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”; “Single, Taken, Not Interested”). Accepting these two contrasting ideas simultaneously is challenging, but Rich makes it feasible. This is the power of Blue Atlas and the genius of the work.
Blue Atlas invites dialogue and asks readers to confront the reality of choice or lack of choice from the initial poems on. Rich’s speaker fearlessly addresses taboo topics, notably naming abortion, and uses universal reverences, particularly through nature imagery, to connect with personal experiences. This approach guides the speaker through trauma toward self-realization, and the reader journeys alongside her. We see this operate effectively on the micro-level throughout the collection, but a prime example comes early in the collection through “Post-Abortion Questionnaire Powered by Survey Monkey,” one of the more experimental poems of the collection. The speaker responds to questions about her experience with abortion, using the language of nature, especially in cultivation (flowers, gardening, etc.), and her personal experience to engage with a subject often shied away from:
1. Do you feel reluctant to talk about the subject of abortion?
In the center of the ceiling a marigold weeps
or perhaps it’s an old chandelier.
Look. Inside there is an otherworldly glow,
shards illuminated in violet-pink
and layers of peeling gold leaf.
Such minds at night unfold.
2. Do you feel guilt or sorrow when discussing your own abortion?
The cabbage is a blue rose,
an alchemical strip show. They scream
when dragged from the earth,
only to find themselves plunged into boiling water.
The narrative unscrolls from cells
of what-ifs and hourglass hopes.
The poem is disorienting at times, specific and familiar at others. While the speaker appears unafraid to discuss abortion and, in fact, seems to have reached a point in her development of self to need to discuss it (“Does anyone escape her own story,” she asks later in “Post-Abortion Questionnaire”), the narrative is troubled by what could have been. This ambiguity causes the reader pause. This human appeal, marred by confusion, may be confusing for the reader. Yet, by crafting the narrative this way, Rich invites the reader into the story. By breaking down the stigma sometimes attached to abortion, she invites speculation and, hopefully, empathy on the part of the reader.
It is only later in the collection that the reader fully grasps the context: the abortion mentioned in the poems was coerced by family. Rich presents a complicated notion of freedom—one that suggests freedom and choice become much more complicated if one is not in a position to fully exercise their free will or lacks support. In this way, Rich’s speaker wrestles with the past constantly and is left to wonder what choice means. In “The Abortion Question,” she explains,
The abortion question is: did you want it?
the abortion question is did you have a choice?
The abortion happened in Manhattan—
the Big Apple shaken and stirred along Madison Avenue—
just two days after being kicked out of his 5th floor Paris walk-up.
The abortion question watches you through sideview mirrors—
the self-satisfied gaze like that of an undertaker,
as if it holds the answer
to the future of your body.
…
Abortion is no joke to this body which ate
enough for two: chips and kosher pickle sandwiches
well into the second trimester.
The abortion question places its miniature sticks
into the cervix,
small bundles of twigs made from seaweed.
See you tomorrow! The abortion question waves.
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
~
This is not an anti-abortion poem.
No one will be killed with a 22-caliber rifle
as in the two women’s health clinics in my hometown.
No one pushing fetus prom outside the central post office.
But the abortion question really loves to attract attention.
It lives in a clock tower, chimes strongest at three months.
…
The question hangs about me like a pest
tugging at my knees. Begs.
It will not go away.
Offers another drink—
a Manhattan, shaken and stirred—
The details about the abortion, along with the developing understanding of freedom that comes out in this poem is part of a larger, slower reveal of key details spread throughout the collection that clarifies the larger narrative of the collection and slowly ends the reader’s speculation, but never their empathy. These details help craft a clearer picture of the speaker for the reader.
As in “Post-Abortion Questionnaire Powered by Survey Monkey,” Rich turns to an experimental form in “Outline for Freshman Composition” to emphasize the speaker’s lack of self-understanding and control over her story. This is a pattern that continues throughout the collection, and in “Outline for Freshman Composition,” the speaker uses the medium of a first-year college-level English paper to explore her experience with abortion further, writing:
Question at issue: Did you agree to an abortion to appease a sister?
Question at issue: What did you fear?
Question at issue: Are a bomb and an abortion detonated the same?
Possible thesis statement: Maybe not a sensible idea to allow someone else to
determine the future.
While the form initially seems to help organize the speaker’s thoughts and helps bring about a possible “thesis” statement about choice and the future, the form quickly becomes overwhelmed by the magnitude of the topic and emotion, ending in quasi-catharsis: a refuting argument and conclusions that deepen the reader’s understanding of the speaker and help the speaker develop a concept of self. She concludes:
Refuting Argument: Wanted out. Wanted none of it. None
of this ever happened.
…
[ ] If I didn’t make the choice but it was the right choice.
If I made the choice but it was the wrong choice.
If I could go back and find my own way.
Unintended Consequences: The rest of my life.
I will never visit Paris
or acquiesce again.
For four decades, no words came between us.
Possible Conclusion: Yes. No. Yes. No.
The abortion wars come, but do not go.
Possible Conclusion: Mybodymmybodybodymyboymybodymy
bodymybomb—
Rich employs more traditional structures between these experimental occasions to highlight those post-cathartic breakthroughs. The speaker’s internal conflict translates to the structure used to present it throughout the collection, another shrewd move by Rich to help engage the reader in an emotionally and politically fraught conversation. As the speaker matures and gains insight into her past and herself, Rich often employs couplets and conventional poetic forms to mirror form and content. In “Burn Barrel,” the speaker clarifies why she is telling her story, and the poem has a tone and humor that many of the poems that appear earlier in the collection do not have. She explains,
You think I write about you to remember…
I think of you this way—
Rotting at the end of the season.
The trouble that’s gone and the burn
barrel of delight that went with it.
I write of you to stake a claim
not to make sense of a man who
worshipped only his own words—
who never tried to read the bright leavings
nuanced and telling in mine.
These more structured, traditional poems become more prevalent as the collection progresses, aiding the reader in immersing themselves naturally in the speaker’s story and experiencing her nuanced journey toward self-realization.
Blue Atlas is both compelling and challenging, nuanced and boundary-breaking. Susan Rich fearlessly plunges her readers into discussions that many writers avoid, guiding them through with a speaker as engaging as the various poetic forms she uses. Rich is a bold poet, whose work resonates in our present moment. Readers across the political spectrum should be unafraid to read and engage with Blue Atlas, but regardless of where you sit politically, be prepared to be challenged as abstract concepts become concrete and political issues become deeply personal.