American Prodigal (New Criticism)

Offers poems dealing with contemporary American life, with subjects ranging from Michael Jackson videos to bologna on white bread sandwiches

Rector's (The Sorrow of Architecture) monologues follow the "motions of living" and "the motion we are" during the late 20th century. His Americans are caught on a "tide" that carries them away from, then toward, home. The first word of verse in the volume is "we," and the last is "Liam," finding the speaker alone. In between, we hear voices of real people, mostly baby boomers, who have left their fields or families, driven as much by economic necessity as ambition. Whether they encounter exhaustion or shopping malls, experience failed marriages, alienating labor, breakdowns, or the MLA job market, some still dream of creating "the nineteenth century town" in "the American city," while others admit, "We're fucked. We know it." A few of Rector's characters do succeed in finding their way home, though the form home takes for these prodigals remains unclear. A latent tribute to Elizabeth Bishop suggests that maintaining the unsettled life (like hers) may be an arrival in itself. Rector's frequent use of ellipses seems strange in such fully drawn, lucid narratives; and single last lines dangling beneath stanzas tend to close the poems' meaning, rather than open them to possibility. Nonetheless, this collection-especially its longer pieces-moves in many ways.
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In his second book of poems, Rector plummets into the depths of Americana and occasionally surfaces empty-handed. This is less an indictment of him, however, than a commentary on our surrounding culture. With subjects ranging from life regarded as a made-for-TV movie, Michael Jackson videos played in the midst of an academic hiring seminar, and bologna-on-white-bread sandwiches, Rector lets the distinctly American fill his poems but not overpower them, except when he lists too many pop-culture sound bites without commentary, as if the listing in itself was enough. Generally, he approaches our country's distinctive creations with a slightly angry edge to his voice and an observant eye, like some contemporary prodigal returning to a homeland he once doubted he'd want to see again. Elizabeth Gunderson