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A review by brice_mo
Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert
5.0
Elisa Gabbert’s Normal Distance is an intensely readable pursuit of the anxieties that move too quickly to be examined.
The titular “distance” exists as the space between possibility and reality, and Gabbert constantly pokes at how stretchy the idea of “almost” is. How close are the crises we fantasize about? And how stable is the reality we think we inhabit?
In “Stop Thinking & End Your Problems,” Gabbert writes,
“Whether or not I believe in God (I don’t), ‘God’ is so
useful, as language. I can’t think without the word God”
This could almost be the book’s thesis—adequate language is impossible, which makes inadequate language essential, even if it causes us to circle around the same thoughts fruitlessly.
Within Normal Distance, the question is whether that circling is really a fruitless act.
Certain images and lines recur throughout the book, just as undefined as they were in their first appearance, but they are transformed as the reader changes throughout each poem.
Desire within these poems is primarily existential, but Gabbert never lets the reader forget that she is aware of what a simplistic appetite that really is. There’s a constant tension between aspiration as heaven-shaking abstraction and just wanting to feel something—anything—grounding.
Rather than allow this discomfort to escalate into the pretentious muddle it could easily become, the poet shows her hand openly.
Every flirtation with poetic tropes is willfully serrated in two with a seemingly flippant, off-the-cuff comment. Instead of destroying the image as one might expect, Gabbert opens it for a cross-section and cross-examination, always ready to interrogate her own thoughts.
Sometimes the most earnest thing is irony.
The titular “distance” exists as the space between possibility and reality, and Gabbert constantly pokes at how stretchy the idea of “almost” is. How close are the crises we fantasize about? And how stable is the reality we think we inhabit?
In “Stop Thinking & End Your Problems,” Gabbert writes,
“Whether or not I believe in God (I don’t), ‘God’ is so
useful, as language. I can’t think without the word God”
This could almost be the book’s thesis—adequate language is impossible, which makes inadequate language essential, even if it causes us to circle around the same thoughts fruitlessly.
Within Normal Distance, the question is whether that circling is really a fruitless act.
Certain images and lines recur throughout the book, just as undefined as they were in their first appearance, but they are transformed as the reader changes throughout each poem.
Desire within these poems is primarily existential, but Gabbert never lets the reader forget that she is aware of what a simplistic appetite that really is. There’s a constant tension between aspiration as heaven-shaking abstraction and just wanting to feel something—anything—grounding.
Rather than allow this discomfort to escalate into the pretentious muddle it could easily become, the poet shows her hand openly.
Every flirtation with poetic tropes is willfully serrated in two with a seemingly flippant, off-the-cuff comment. Instead of destroying the image as one might expect, Gabbert opens it for a cross-section and cross-examination, always ready to interrogate her own thoughts.
Sometimes the most earnest thing is irony.