Muzzle Thyself

by Lauren Fairbanks

Nothing is pure or sacred in "Muzzle Thyself." If it hasn't rubbed up against something or isn't sweating, it's of little concern to Lauren Fairbanks. Literary fragments, "found materials," are organized in such a way as to appear unliterary. The narrative line breaks with authorial intrusion and other modes of interruption. Most poems end with a "slammed door" or a punchline. "Muzzle Thyself" is not lofty or nice, but it has juice. It's a created world, a world reflecting one mind. The creation is complexly unrealistic, filled with humor, rubbish, and ambiguous information.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1991

About the author

Lauren Fairbanks was born in 1958 in South Bend, Indiana, and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She has degrees from the University of Scranton and the University of Chicago, and has studied creative writing with both Gilbert Sorrentino and Richard Stern. She is married to Madan Jagernauth and lives in Plano, Texas.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I read poetry. Because it's the only other book the author of Sister Carrie has pub'd. And I really rather enjoyed that one.

I don't know nuthing about poetry. But this stuff in here apparently is strange stuff. Check it out.




Truism for our cities
of great unwashed populations:
nothing succeeds like excess.
Economically and chemically
depressed
peoples
leave chunks of digital time
on my hands.

Bought a sky scope at PINOCCHIO.
They think I'm looking into my pen.
It's my sky scope.
So. I'm a little weird.

They say
long-nosed liars
with black-spotted tongues
congregate under wood-carving tools
which facilitate spindle-turning.

The sordid will have spotted
the sexual allusion.

A LOTTA LOTTA WEIRD, I heard you say.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Sister Carrie earlier this year, I was interested in finding more from Lauren Fairbanks. Her bibliography is rather sparse but her first published work, this 1991 poetry collection from Dalkey Archive is the likely next step. Published two years before Sister Carrie (another Dalkey work) this collection shares a lot with Sister Carrie. Both published in her early 30s and sharing some subject matter they feel like pairing works in some ways.

What I enjoyed so much about Sister Carrie was Fairbanks’ wordplay. While the narrative was abstract and avant garde in its postmodern presentation I was always drawn to the prose and amazed with what she could accomplish. While I overall enjoyed my reading experience some of the chapters in Sister Carrie could lend to an overbearing and confusing experience at times. I was hoping the poetry form would lend to a more digestible consumption of this writing style.

In some ways this is true but overall Fairbanks’ poems can be even more abstract than her narrative prose. While I have spent a lot of time this year familiarizing myself with more poetry, I found this collection to be a challenge at times that pushed me to my ability with the form. Upon first read I really wasn’t sure what to make of this collection. There were poems I liked and many phrases that I enjoyed in the ways I enjoyed Sister Carrie, but as a whole the reading experience was inconsistent and often incomprehensible.

These poems are harsh and rough, not in their writing quality but in their tone and subject matter. When you get a sense of a scene being portrayed it is typically set in a strip club or a coke bar. Similar to Sister Carrie there is a big “90s tone” to a lot of the writing. You could describe it as “grungy”.

While there are titles to some poems, there are many that don’t. These are listed in the table of contents with the first line of the poem in quotations. I’m not sure how typical a practice this is but it is something I haven’t seen in other collections I’ve read. It makes you wonder where a poem truly begins and ends, playing into the postmodern interpretation of what a poem is.

Upon second reading I read these poems out loud. I found that vocalizing the poems greatly improved my appreciation for this collection. Fairbanks’ wordplay comes through best in this way and shows that the sound of the words, no matter how nonsensical their meaning might be, is the real intent here. It is a joy to read in this way as she combines vulgar slang with complex higher vocabulary, making for a challenging reading experience, in many ways taunting the reader. This high and low combination being something familiar to the postmodern style but done here in a way that feels unique to Fairbanks, particularly in the poetic form.

This is a unique poetry collection that I’ll be returning to. That being said, my highlights from this collection are quite minimal and I’m not sure what kind of lasting impact these poems will have on me aside from their boundary pushing nature. When comparing this and Sister Carrie I do still prefer Sister Carrie as a way to experience Fairbanks’ writing. That being said, I’m grateful to get the chance to read something else from her.

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH MY GOD this book is nothing less than 5 stars!
It's 10 stars! And I think the Kathy Acker blurb says it, "What a strange mixture of literariness and originality. Fairbanks magically meshes the rhythms and textures of American poetry, especially of the Black Mountain school, with her own feminine feminist and very angry voice and music." YES, SHE KICKS SO MUCH ASS! I bought this book maybe 15 years ago in a used bookshop and it's one of those books you turn to again and again over the years. It's always fresh and like you're reading it for the first time! Here's a favorite, I love it:

GOOD LITTLE HATER

Couple of green WHAT?
No one gets a (bathed in periodot light)
home.

She's a singlecellanimal
on a chain
taking herself seriously
elsewhere
for
a
harmless
little
everynight screw
(now and again).

Me? One GREEN one.

Green of hate
finds
she is the NOT HIDDEN ENOUGH
link
to a meaningless sealskinned
people.

P.S. Did every cell of her body
(bathed in peridot light)
REALLY
call out to you?

--------------------------

C'MON, that is fucking AMAZING! Laruen Fairbanks ROCKS! And it's the only book of poetry I've ever read by her. I need to see if she's written more poetry. I know she wrote a novel.

I LOVE THIS BOOK!
EVERY FUCKING POEM OF THIS BOOK!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

[Paul Apelgren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The imagination contained is sticky, dark, and difficult to access, but the work is worth having in my growing poetry collection. I worked through these poems slowly, loudly, and repeatedly. They are intriguing enough to spawn further study.