JAY BESEMER Reviews
Family Resemblance: An Anthology and
Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres edited by Marcela Sulak and
Jacqueline Kolosov
(Rose Metal Press, Brookline,
MA, 2015)
The greatest gift any anthology can give a reader is to
not only introduce exciting new types of writing, but also (and perhaps more
importantly) to present writers who are currently making that exciting work. Family Resemblance does this, certainly,
and stands firmly confident before whatever skeptics of the hybrid-genre
designation might still exist.
Like many other Rose Metal Press anthologies, this volume
is structured along a basic “what is it, what’s it look like, who does it, and
how/why” format. The editors have clearly organized the book into eight
sections (as one might guess, given the title) headed by distinct hybrid-genre
terms: Lyric Essay, Poetic Memoir, Performative, and so on. Within each section
we find an introduction, a helping of example texts, and practice statements by
their authors. This is a structure that works well for teaching, but also
yields a surprisingly comprehensive joy for recreational readers as well as
active writers of hybrid-genre works. In this case, Family Resemblance works
hard to make its content approachable to readers who may be less familiar with
work that straddles, combines or defies categories.
Yet “approachable” does not mean unchallenging; this is a
collection of exciting, varied, eye-opening work by uncompromising authors,
many of whom grapple visibly and honestly with the existence of genre at all,
or contest the labels placed on their work by editors and the marketing arms of
publishing houses small and large. For example, Kazim Ali asserts in his
practice statement “I Am No Hybrid, No Other than Myself,” “I did not mean to
innovate but knew I could not speak” (126). The formal structure of his book Bright Felon (excerpted in this volume)
enabled the book to be written in the first place, rather than arising out of a
desire to shake things up. It’s a deeper need; a book that comes from a
physical imperative within the author instead of a cosmetic choice to mimic
some hot new form or change a series of words on a substrate. He continues on
the next page, making his position even clearer:
Yes it is deeply entrenched
heterosexism (a belief in genre manifests as a belief in gender—they are rooted
in the same impulse: that a body (or text) must “behave” according to the
social rules that govern it) that makes Bright Felon into “poetry.”
It’s not that Ali has anything against poetry, of course.
The problem he points out is the obsession for categorization of texts and
bodies according to gen(d)re, especially those categories and designations
originating from outside the individual’s own experience and concept of
selfhood (and/or the text they have created).
This is important—this apparent conflation of life and work, of body and
text—because for many authors whose bodies and identities don’t fit within the
narrow social expectations of their contexts, hybridity is the only way to go
for their texts. It’s a matter of
language, as well as formal conventions that are not generous enough to allow
for authenticity. How does Ali-as-narrator in Bright Felon find a subject
position when
The myths do not write me though
because I am I. There wasn’t one before me.
When I said what I said in the
cold afternoon, when I said finally what I needed to say in that house, my
father asked me, “Are you a Muslim?”
Dumbstruck, I had no answer.
I am I, a driftless star,
disowned from his own constellation.
Who will be able to find the
polar star now?
How I become a man is an
unwritten book (132).
Authenticity comes at high cost, if the claiming of a
particular subject position results in one’s removal from one’s context or any
hope of recognition within it. This kind of authenticity requires not just the
construction of the self but a place to be (and a language to contain) that self.
Jennifer Bartlett’s contribution is also presented in the
Poetic Memoir section, and shares some risks with Ali’s work. Both authors speak of creating or writing into
a form that contains bodily experience other forms cannot contain, or actively
reject. Bartlett too rejects the assumption that the hybridity was a choice
from pre-existing options, emphasizing that the formal presence of her
contribution was more the result of an ongoing process. Though this is an
awkward paraphrase on my part, it might be like wearing a garment one is in the
process of constructing, because there’s no ready-to-wear that doesn’t leave
one unsustainably naked. Here’s Bartlett’s take, from “Necessary Ambiguity,” her
author’s statement:
A hybrid memoir was not a conscious
choice. It was an opening, a way to move through the work; I am, at heart, a
poet. The piece leaves much unexplained, but I think somehow the affairs of
life are necessarily ambiguous. And having an “impaired” body, or one that does
not meet society’s narrow expectations, necessitates creating a new form […] My
body is fragmented, my soul is doubled; how could my work not be fragmented as
well (136)?
Bartlett’s contribution to the anthology is an excerpt
from “My Body Is (the) Marginalia; The Sun Drawn a Saw Across the
Strings.” The questions raised in the
statement are echoed and deepened in the contributed text, particularly on page
137: “how much does one’s ability to feel the other depend on one’s feeling for
oneself/how much does one’s ability to be for the other depend on one’s ability
to be for oneself.” Questions as ideas or rhetorical moves share space in “Sun
Drawn” with questions as objects, as
things occurring in the narrative. “I want to change my pronoun to they/That
way there will be one of me/For each of you at all times,” writes Bartlett to a
lover. Further, “In sleep, your body curved toward me/Though dreaming you said Question”
(138).
The
passage from which the quotes are drawn concerns open marriage, and a close
reading is needed to guess that “you” refers to the lover, not the husband—an
inbuilt question of identity, enriched by the loveliness of the sleep
utterance, which could be a naming, a directive, or an opening to a
conversation (albeit a dream conversation).
This imperative to question—to write from a questioning space, or a
permanent state of questioning—is, I think, an important unifying need
throughout the entirety of Family Resemblance. And though it may be stating the
obvious, both of the authors mentioned place questions of normativity—in
gender, sexuality, abledness, religion, race, and intimate relationships—right
in the hottest part of the spotlight’s circle. The hybrid imperative, so
important to these texts, empowers a type of embodied engagement with the concepts
and needs that form the bedrock of lives.
If the
first unifying strain in Family
Resemblance concerns the embrace of hybridity to contain the uncontainable,
the second strain might be the push toward pictorial hybridity to encompass
symbiotic modes of telling. Several approaches to pictorial hybridity are
represented in the anthology. Craig Santos Perez and Miriam Libicki are two notable
contributors in this area, each making very different choices to meet the needs
of what must be said/shown. Perez uses
the spatial realm of the page as a physical location for multi-vocal stories;
in/on the page the placement, look and behavior of language evokes and honors
the communal experience of shared storytelling—a lived history that refuses to
be papered over by colonizing language forms.
In his
statement “Pacific Hybrid Poetics: Unwriting and Interweaving Visual Stories,”
Perez clarifies,
These talk-stories did not
follow linear or predictable plots. They were often improvisational,
fragmentary, and spiraling. These talk-stories were also communal because many
voices contributed to the telling. Sometimes family members interrupted each
other; sometimes family members told the same story from diverging
perspectives; sometimes family members remembered stories differently. As
families wove stories together, new stories became threaded and unraveled
(342).
One fascinating thing about the visual storytelling in
Perez’s text is the inseparable link, in the mind of the reader, between visual
and aural. The sound of the storytelling is recreated in the imaginary space
through visual cues, and the text is brought powerfully to life. See—hear—here:
(click on image to enlarge)
A staccato, hesitating, sibilant whisper fills the mind
as this page is slowly, lovingly traversed. We are right there, both
clandestine radio listeners/translators, and the “someones” who might be
listening outside.
Miriam
Libicki also uses the page to make a place for stories that are too big or deep
to site comfortably within language alone. Her contribution to Family Resemblance is an excerpt from
her project “Strangers,” which she describes as “a hybrid of journal writing
and journalism” (363) and is a beautifully drawn and hand-lettered exploration
of the complex consequences of an influx of African migrants into Israel. The
story is not only complicated in a political sense; it touches on and
resonates—often uncomfortably—with Israel’s own history. Roles of nations and
peoples, individuals and institutions, are swapped and blurred. The crisis impacts
Libicki in a personal way, which she makes plain by placing herself in the
pages of her text:
(click on image to enlarge)
From the
self-portraiture of a page like this, to the inclusion of illustrations of her
own Facebook feed, to the simple use of the first-person, Libicki claims a
subject position as concerned commentator, affected by but not involved in the
situation. This self-inclusion works well to remind readers that we are
experiencing events through the perspective of the author/narrator.
Another choice also reflects the author’s presence as
both creator and curator of this text—a visual choice this time. Further down on page 363, she reveals that
she has “[pointed] the figures’ eyes at the reader” in her ink wash drawings,
regardless of the direction of the peoples’ gazes in the news photos that she
used as source material. This is a vital and powerful piece of editing, which
Libicki does to draw the reader deep into the page and the story, hoping to
kindle a more human/e and compassionate experience. Though ultimately driven by
a different needs, contexts and foci, Libicki and Perez combine visual and
textual language into unique forms that make it possible to tell a more
complete story.
Family Resemblance is one of the most engaging and
effective hybrid-genre anthologies I’ve experienced, both as a reader and a
writer of hybrid genres myself. After
reading this book, those new to the idea of hybridity will gain a solid
appreciation and understanding of the broad range of possibility contained in
that “family” of textual approaches.
More experienced readers and writers will doubtless make new friends in
its pages—I certainly have.
*****
Hybrid artist/poet Jay Besemer is the author of many poetic
artifacts including Chelate, Telephone (both from
Brooklyn Arts Press), A New Territory Sought (Moria), Aster
to Daylily (Damask Press), and Object with Man’s Face (Rain
Taxi Ohm Editions). He is a contributor to the groundbreaking
anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. His
performances and video poems have been featured in various festivals and
series, including Meekling Press’ TALKS Series, Chicago Calling Arts Festival,
Red Rover Series {readings that play with reading}, and Absinthe & Zygote.
Jay also contributes performance texts, poems, and critical essays to numerous
publications including Jacket2, Nerve
Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature, PANK, Petra, Barzakh, The Collagist,
Rain Taxi Review of Books, The VOLTA, and the CCM organs ENTROPY and ENCLAVE. He is a contributing editor with The Operating System, and
founder of the Intermittent Series in Chicago.
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