by Mikal Wix
May 7, 2024
Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space by Catherine Barnett; Graywolf Press; 96 pages; $17.00.
On May 7th, 2024, Graywolf Press publishes Catherine Barnett’s latest book of poems, Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space, and if you’re not familiar with Barnett’s work, change that now. It’s not often to find poems that capture such deep emotional resonance within the crystalline enclosures of a balanced, scholarly beauty. Her poetry reminds me of Rilke’s oeuvre, the Bohemian-Austrian poet known for his intense, lyrical, mystical poems. Both poets grapple with the existential nature of being alive, an ontological suffering, which Barnett explores here by excavating the vagaries of loneliness.
Where Rilke used the conceit of angels, Barnett wields her metaphors provided by memory, science, and art. When she quotes unforgettable lines by Frost, Plath, and Brooks in the poem “Studies on Loneliness, ix,” I expected to find this from Rilke, too: “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?” from “The First Elegy” of Duino Elegies. But Barnett composes her own tapestry of such broad-brush strokes throughout her own book. For example, in “Where but to think is to be full of sorrow,” her poem titled with the line from Keats’ “Ode to a Nightengale,” the speaker opines on ways to solve the problem of loss through kleptomania, “What belongs to whom, who gets taken from whom, and how, how it happens.” Or from her opening poem, “Studies in Loneliness, i,” the question looms, “When did loneliness become equal parts strategy, ministration, origin story, and addiction?”
In this new book, Barnett exudes poetic strength by revealing that weakness is the wisdom behind contentment, specifically the power of allowing oneself to be vulnerable. The theme of loneliness rests atop a high crest and falling away to either side are the twin dialectics of “praise and lament,” of “both an opiate and a weight,” of being “a joy to be hidden / a disaster not to be found,” and how space and time are divided by measures of infinity and eternity, respectfully. She suggests that perhaps we can only hope to know loneliness by its opposing feature: the pleasure of solitude, or by its “awful dichotomies.” There’s a real sense of desperation among these poems, like a mind grasping for the thing that will keep it afloat but realizing that element might very well be a heavier thing to carry: “tragedy makes me desperate / to acknowledge all I love.”
The experience of loss becomes decentered, sometimes schizophrenic, and often incommensurable. In “Studies in Loneliness, vi,” a proposed solution to the problem of bodies in space can be seen through the lens of the ropedancers under the big tent: “where loneliness is the net beneath the trapeze act of love. / Or is it the other way round?” In Barnett’s poems, these parallel dimensions of solace operate metaphorically in flowers, paintings, memories, and dementia, as both a pathology, or malady, and as a part of the overall human condition, at times to be cured and often simply to be endured.
In the poem, “Envoy,” the speaker recognizes the duality and duplicity of hoping to both avoid and embrace loss, “their welcome signs and their no-trespassing signs,” a sleight of hand that even the imperial moth with all its grace and disguise cannot unsee, choosing instead to stay in the light rather than pursue its other needs. The speaker buries the moth under a dead tree only after photographing it there, as if the author is saying how what we observe as an ending can also be seen as a foundation for moving forward.
These poems all serve to illustrate the many various solutions to solving the singular problem of bodies in space, both literally and metaphorically. Barnett’s acumen with the lyrical line is put to superb use in this book. For example, in “Studies in Loneliness, vii,” the speaker reflects on the disillusionment of a relationship as “waiting for a man who seemed to say it was over simply by removing / one of the many hairs that cling to whatever I wear.” Barnett’s new work here in this book adds another notch on the belt of dispelling the notion that loneliness should only be viewed as contrary to human nature, when in effect, the creative forces within us so often need to be isolated socially and given some inner solitude to be capable of producing any level of transcendence. Subtlety and fragility run hand in hand with this enterprise of seeking the pinnacle of revered artistry, and loneliness or solitude may be integral to personhood, as much as “the endless chatter / of praise and lament” are to the lifecycle of any region of space surrounding a body experiencing forces of attraction.
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Finding The Fragile Necessity of What Stands Opposite to Loneliness in Catherine Barnett's Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space
POETRY REVIEW
Image by Funda from Pexels
Mikal Wix lives in the American South, which seeds insight into many outlooks, including revenant visions from the closet. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in Corvus Review, Olit, Berkeley Poetry Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Roi Fainéant Press, decomp journal, and elsewhere, and works as a science editor by day.
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