Rosie Garland takes on an interesting and potentially rich
topic in
Everything Must Go, which
follows her battle with cancer.
I
expected some touching moments or profound truths, but ultimately I was left
feeling cold.
Garland’s focus throughout the thirty-three
poems in the book is on process and her body.
These, I assume, were the most interesting or moving parts of the
ordeal for her, and I have no right to tell her what she should be interested
in or moved by, but as the poems ticked past I found myself uninvolved.
It was like reading a medical chart expressed
in simile and personification.
I
recently had a friend die of cancer (Garland did not die, by the way), and the
most significant parts of his last days were based in connection: other people,
memories, what he was leaving behind, my own children coming to understand what
was happening, the struggle to finish what he had started before he
succumbed.
All these were strangely
absent from Garland’s
work.
Thirty-three poems later I have no
idea who Rosie Garland
is, what she
loves, what her story is.
I know only
the indignity of her medical processes and the color of the waiting room
carpet.
Her poetry itself is skillful, but again rarely has that
magic effect of a profound truth, perfectly expressed, the way great poetry
does. I rarely felt surprised. Exceptions were occasional turns of phrase
and image: when she describes “the man who watched his wife led away: her
birdlike, crumpled steps, his face distorted, his eyes punched red.” Another memorable poem is a letter to her
hair, and how her expectation of losing it suddenly is belied by the fact of it
lingering to the point of annoyance.
It is not that the words are poorly assembled, though the
poetry is entirely prose, and lacks any sound devices or rhythm. I find myself reminded of a favorite author
of mine, Jeanette Winterson, and her novel Written
on the Body, which also concerns cancer.
Garland’s poetry is similar to Winterson’s prose, but this highlights
what Garland’s work lacks—character, relationships, and a greater emotional depth
than the constant lingering on physical change and medical detail.
