In relationships, how do we manage our multiple selves? Can we truly be the same person alone and with others? The Green Condition, by Elizabeth J. Colen, explores the notion of the self.
Part collage, part lyric essay, and part animal invocation, Colen traverses different spheres: Roman history, the domestic space, poetic space, academia, loneliness, solitude, a complicated relationship and the environment of the Pacific Northwest; and she writes about how physical spaces change us, make us take notice and listen.
In these physical spaces the narrator is settled and unsettling: “I didn’t want to move here” and “I didn’t want to move here, but I’m growing to like it: the water, the planes, the neighbors even. The unexpected quiet.”
As the relationship begins to unravel, the narrator becomes more entwined with the physical world: “That week the spring tides: the water recedes far into the bay and the mudflats shine until just before dawn.”
In solitude, the narrator’s loneliness is palpable. However, Colen balances mundane tasks like: taking out the garbage, walking the dog, or visiting a coffee shop with the language of facts and observations: “When the sun is out, I stand in the yard. The dog sniffs a pile of droppings” and “Rome’s population grew from convicts and runaways, people who couldn’t be anywhere else.” What results are a series of deconstructed prose vignettes that requires readers to create and form their own meaning.
Lastly, if this book had a mascot, it would be the raccoon. The raccoon haunts the beginning of the book, a ghost animal scouring the trash. The raccoon makes an appearance toward the end of the book: “Just for a second I see white fur on the ears, white fur around its nose, its robber baron mask, greyblack body, striped tail.” Later, the raccoon dies, as does the relationship: “There is a raccoon dead in the alley, blood around its mouth. Is this what I wished for. I call animal control. They say they will send someone out. / When I peek out the gate an hour later; the animal is gone.”
The Green Condition, Elizabeth J. Colen
Ricochet Editions, 2013
69 pages
Retail: $15
was born in India and has since lived on three continents. She is the author of the poetry collection How to Bury the Dead (Black Coffee Press). Her poems have appeared in J Journal, PANK, Southern Women’s Review and elsewhere. She holds a M.F.A from The New School and is the recipient of a Kundiman fellowship and Binder Conference Scholarship. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
