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Impossible Bottle: Poems
Claudia Emerson published six poetry collections with LSU Press, including Late Wife, Secure the Shadow, and The Opposite House. A professor of English and member of the creative writing faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Emerson served as the poet laureate of Virginia and won numerous awards for teaching and writing—including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry—before her death in 2014.This posthumous volume of poetry from Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson explores the suspended state of existence that illness imposes upon its sufferers—what she calls the “impossible bottle.” With a strong will and a self-deprecating awareness of the instinct to seek meaning in metaphor, she confronts the indignities, fears, and moments of grace in a struggle with cancer. Her poems forge unlikely connections between the present reality and memories of the past, such as an MRI scan conjuring up images of a June expedition through a tunnel under a Maryland mountain.
Rooted equally in the sterility of the hospital and the vitality of the natural world, Impossible Bottle mines the trappings of illness, showing how disease attempts to rob us of our humanity even as it reminds us of our mortality.
Rooted equally in the sterility of the hospital and the vitality of the natural world, Impossible Bottle mines the trappings of illness, showing how disease attempts to rob us of our humanity even as it reminds us of our mortality.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 9, 2015
3 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
About the author
Claudia Emerson
19 books38 followersBorn and raised in Chatham, Virginia, Claudia Emerson studied writing at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her poetry, steeped in the Southern Narrative tradition, bears the influences of Ellen Bryant Voigt, Betty Adcock, and William Faulkner. Of the collection Late Wife (2005), poet Deborah Pope observed, “Like the estranged lover in one of her poems who pitches horseshoes in the dark with preternatural precision, so Emerson sends her words into a different kind of darkness with steely exactness, their arc of perception over and over striking true.”
Emerson’s volumes of poetry include Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997); Pinion: An Elegy (2002); Late Wife (2005), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Figure Studies (2008); and Secure the Shadow (2012).
Her honors include two additional Pulitzer Prize nominations as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 she was appointed poet laureate of Virginia, a two-year role.
Emerson was poetry editor for the Greensboro Review and a contributing editor for Shenandoah. She taught at Washington and Lee University, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and the University of Mary Washington. She died in 2014.
From The Poetry Foundation website.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/c...
Emerson’s volumes of poetry include Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997); Pinion: An Elegy (2002); Late Wife (2005), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Figure Studies (2008); and Secure the Shadow (2012).
Her honors include two additional Pulitzer Prize nominations as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 she was appointed poet laureate of Virginia, a two-year role.
Emerson was poetry editor for the Greensboro Review and a contributing editor for Shenandoah. She taught at Washington and Lee University, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and the University of Mary Washington. She died in 2014.
From The Poetry Foundation website.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/c...
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 17, 2018
I have been a fan of Emerson for a long time, and I think that (tragically) this is her most powerful book that I have read. Written in the encroaching shadow of the poet's cancer, these poems regard the body's frailty with sadness and yearning but never with a resigned glance. The weakened, sick, or old bodies that the poems often describe are not stationary, not lifeless. Even in twilight Emerson can point out life and all its wonders: she is bloodied but unbowed.
The "metastasis" poems scattered throughout the book's first section are perhaps the most daring and eye-catching. Strangely spaced and lacking punctuation, these poems are lessons in how enjambment can create half-meanings and layer significance into short poems. The book opener, "Metastasis: Intercession" is alone worth the price of admission, and even though the speaker's "sorrow is ecstatic something / you do not feel," she can still see beauty in the world: "miraculous such green there / there you are" (3). While that first poem talks about the spread of disease, the other poems in the series describe how members of the natural world spread beyond their original (sometimes man-made, sometimes not) boundaries: rivers, ivy, moths, trees. Not only does sickness spread, but life does too.
The second section is the "infusion suite," 12 poems that Emerson wrote while receiving chemotherapy. These are, unsurprisingly (given the limited time in which they were composed) also brief, but also powerful, "yes, yes this is me," acknowledges one speaker to her chemo-toting nurse, confirming herself and her new reality as a cancer patient ("1" 29). The speaker leaves us to reflect on how suddenly our self-perception can be changed.
There are also longer narrative poems scattered throughout the collection. The subject matter in them is more varied, but they often chronicle triumph or fight in the face of tragedy.
In spite of the circumstances surrounding its composition, Impossible Bottle does not feel slowed by age or disease. On the contrary, it speaks with the vitality of one who knows she must speak now before forever holding her peace, before becoming "the body of light that hangs from the rafters" ("5" 33). She moves ever forward, toward whatever lies ahead:
Mules and men died in here, hauling out
the stone to make this
passage, narrow towpath alongside a stream
of water you can hear
but cannot see. The way out is searing
and round, a worthless sun
that lights nothing but itself, and still you choose it,
the entrance behind you
just as fixed but changed, somehow, another
state, no, another country,
farther away, now, you are sure, than this" ("MRI" 6).
The "metastasis" poems scattered throughout the book's first section are perhaps the most daring and eye-catching. Strangely spaced and lacking punctuation, these poems are lessons in how enjambment can create half-meanings and layer significance into short poems. The book opener, "Metastasis: Intercession" is alone worth the price of admission, and even though the speaker's "sorrow is ecstatic something / you do not feel," she can still see beauty in the world: "miraculous such green there / there you are" (3). While that first poem talks about the spread of disease, the other poems in the series describe how members of the natural world spread beyond their original (sometimes man-made, sometimes not) boundaries: rivers, ivy, moths, trees. Not only does sickness spread, but life does too.
The second section is the "infusion suite," 12 poems that Emerson wrote while receiving chemotherapy. These are, unsurprisingly (given the limited time in which they were composed) also brief, but also powerful, "yes, yes this is me," acknowledges one speaker to her chemo-toting nurse, confirming herself and her new reality as a cancer patient ("1" 29). The speaker leaves us to reflect on how suddenly our self-perception can be changed.
There are also longer narrative poems scattered throughout the collection. The subject matter in them is more varied, but they often chronicle triumph or fight in the face of tragedy.
In spite of the circumstances surrounding its composition, Impossible Bottle does not feel slowed by age or disease. On the contrary, it speaks with the vitality of one who knows she must speak now before forever holding her peace, before becoming "the body of light that hangs from the rafters" ("5" 33). She moves ever forward, toward whatever lies ahead:
Mules and men died in here, hauling out
the stone to make this
passage, narrow towpath alongside a stream
of water you can hear
but cannot see. The way out is searing
and round, a worthless sun
that lights nothing but itself, and still you choose it,
the entrance behind you
just as fixed but changed, somehow, another
state, no, another country,
farther away, now, you are sure, than this" ("MRI" 6).
January 6, 2021
Claudia Emerson knows something we don't-- this book is infinitely wise, calculated, visceral; the speaker coming to terms with her life. The way the "Metastasis" poems each begin from the closing line of the previous one, so that they may be read as one long, cycling piece, illuminates Emerson's mastery of form and discernment for the nature of disease. The voice is lucid, making meaning as the body faces all possible complications. A triumph <3
June 1, 2017
There is a sense of urgency to these that are heartbreaking.
Chain, chain, chain is Emerson at her finest and everything I loved about Late Wife. There are many really great ones and as a collection these are great as well.
Simply put she was a genius.
Chain, chain, chain is Emerson at her finest and everything I loved about Late Wife. There are many really great ones and as a collection these are great as well.
Simply put she was a genius.
July 4, 2018
Wow. The Infusion Suite poems. I recommend watching her reading at the Suwanee Conference. Incredibly personal and delightful. Definitely want to read more
July 4, 2018
Wow. The Infusion Suite poems. I recommend watching her reading at the Suwanee Conference. Incredibly personal and delightful. Definitely want to read more
April 14, 2023
Clear and devastating.
May 5, 2024
the infusion suite and impossible bottle sections
February 7, 2017
What do you do when you discover you have a terminal cancer, much like family and friends who grew up where you did? If you are Claudia Emerson, between chemo treatments and doctor visits and trying to live your life for as long and as well as possible, you also write a beautiful (and as it turned out final) collection of poetry.
Emerson's "Impossible Bottle" is that glass container within which a sailboat was placed as she watched when a child. It is also the container of her life, her body, her mind, her soul. And it is the bottle that is this book and her other poems wherein she tries to place a miniature that is true to all she was and all she lived.
Claudia Emerson had so much more to contribute and so many more poems to write before she dies. Her death came much too soon. She left behind these words and images, for which we are grateful. And their echoes haunt us now that Claudia Emerson has slipped away into time itself:
"Only/they can tell you, when you/return to them, what you can live without, what/regenerates, and on hearing it,/you feel a lightening, the way a snake must/on slipping through its discarded/mouth into another year, or, knowing nothing/of a year, into time itself."
Emerson's "Impossible Bottle" is that glass container within which a sailboat was placed as she watched when a child. It is also the container of her life, her body, her mind, her soul. And it is the bottle that is this book and her other poems wherein she tries to place a miniature that is true to all she was and all she lived.
Claudia Emerson had so much more to contribute and so many more poems to write before she dies. Her death came much too soon. She left behind these words and images, for which we are grateful. And their echoes haunt us now that Claudia Emerson has slipped away into time itself:
"Only/they can tell you, when you/return to them, what you can live without, what/regenerates, and on hearing it,/you feel a lightening, the way a snake must/on slipping through its discarded/mouth into another year, or, knowing nothing/of a year, into time itself."
May 1, 2016
This is a great little book of poetry from award-winning poet and writer Claudia Emerson. Completed shortly before her death, it covers the everday, the theoretical, the reflection, and the transcendence of terminal cancer. If you've ever dealt with cancer, the insights definitely hit you more than I think they would most people.
April 24, 2016
It's amazing how her technique translates across different topics/books. The attention to language, precision, and control in these poems is wonderful. And she makes clear her subjects through juxtaposition, which I admire.
February 21, 2016
"...I am/ the body of light that swings from the rafters."
Yes, my dear, you are.
Yes, my dear, you are.
April 28, 2017
65pp. Written as she was battling and losing against terminal cancer. I could read about 5pp at a time--every word sharp with life longing. All of her books will be on my shelves at some point, but Late Wife--her collection that one the Pulitzer--is one that everyone who loves poetry should own.
5
I am not this, not here, this time. I am
what I mistook for a shadow
in our walled garden, gathered beneath the concrete
bench, concrete also the sky,
like the cold, sorrowful bottom of something; it is
a collared shadow, though--a stray cat
I see us feeding in the afternoon. And I
will watch it eat from a dish
on the back stoop, the bathe in the open doorway
of the garage, in that narrow shaft
of afternoon light, where I will be also
and also behind it, where I am
the body of light that swings from the rafters.
5
I am not this, not here, this time. I am
what I mistook for a shadow
in our walled garden, gathered beneath the concrete
bench, concrete also the sky,
like the cold, sorrowful bottom of something; it is
a collared shadow, though--a stray cat
I see us feeding in the afternoon. And I
will watch it eat from a dish
on the back stoop, the bathe in the open doorway
of the garage, in that narrow shaft
of afternoon light, where I will be also
and also behind it, where I am
the body of light that swings from the rafters.
Read
May 28, 2019Claudia Emerson won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by then-Governor Tim Kaine in 2008. Impossible Bottle, completed shorty before her death from a recurrent metastatic cancer in 2014, was posthumously published. Even if a reader didn’t know any of the back story, the dedication to specifically named doctors along with the opening quote from Emily Dickinson (“This World is not Conclusion”) sets the tone.
The title, along with the magnificent cover, is an extended metaphor that goes on and on. It comes from a poem in the final section, where the speaker is told the secret of how those ships get inside the glass bottles that many of us were fascinated by as children. How does cancer get inside the human body? As the cells grow and divide, does the body itself become an “impossible bottle” that at some point can no longer contain the cancer? Slowly reading and re-reading these poems actually broadened the metaphor for me; as Emerson’s life narrowed to its conclusion, I found the cover image of a butterflies escaping a bottle arresting. On an obvious level, many people release butterfiles at a memorial service, but on a much larger level, the soul, the spirit, cannot be contained, nor can it be extinguished by the death of the body. This leads to thoughts of migration, of a journey, which is often the word used as a metaphor for end-of-life transitions.
The poems are an honest depiction of Emerson’s experience with the return of her cancer, discovering the extent and likely trajectory of the disease, and her treatment. The concise, controlled nature of poetry is an ideal venue for sharing these details. Just as a cancer patient needs to make every bite of food count, a poet needs to make every word earn its place, and Emerson excels at this.
The title, along with the magnificent cover, is an extended metaphor that goes on and on. It comes from a poem in the final section, where the speaker is told the secret of how those ships get inside the glass bottles that many of us were fascinated by as children. How does cancer get inside the human body? As the cells grow and divide, does the body itself become an “impossible bottle” that at some point can no longer contain the cancer? Slowly reading and re-reading these poems actually broadened the metaphor for me; as Emerson’s life narrowed to its conclusion, I found the cover image of a butterflies escaping a bottle arresting. On an obvious level, many people release butterfiles at a memorial service, but on a much larger level, the soul, the spirit, cannot be contained, nor can it be extinguished by the death of the body. This leads to thoughts of migration, of a journey, which is often the word used as a metaphor for end-of-life transitions.
The poems are an honest depiction of Emerson’s experience with the return of her cancer, discovering the extent and likely trajectory of the disease, and her treatment. The concise, controlled nature of poetry is an ideal venue for sharing these details. Just as a cancer patient needs to make every bite of food count, a poet needs to make every word earn its place, and Emerson excels at this.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews