A review of Anne Bauer’s Fine Absence, by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens
In Anne Bauer’s poetry chapbook, Fine Absence ( 2011), loss is revealed through the completion of small domestic rituals. In the chapbook’s first poems (“Old Tapes, “Thank You,” “Eulogy,”) the reader does not know who or what is “absent.” Allusions are made to small disappearances: the prose poem “Thank you” is about a secret that we never discover– the father does not bring down wrath on his daughter (it wasn’t just about stealing beer or cigarettes; she says as much in the poem):
“…the excuses that limped, pewling, out of my mouth and died
on the floor between us, not a word of judgement or recrimination.
One thing caused banishment, only one thing, one time.
Months passed and we spoke again, but never of that,
or what happened to me, alone in that silence.”
Although Bauer does not reveal what the “one thing” was, she is grateful to her father for the silence between them, the eventual forgiveness, the unshared apologies.
In “Old Tapes,” we feel absence through the inability to change history. She “knows what will happen, what does happen, what did happen,” and cannot rewind time through celluloid, which inspires her feelings of hopelessness. Unspoken words and despair create little deaths. The true gravitas, however, is revealed in an odd subject matter: hair.
A daughter tweezes her eyebrows and ends up shaving them off in an attempt to create evenness. The daughter felt things would be “better” if she were prettier. In the poem, “Whats the Matter with her John?” the daughter comes down to the dinner table and the mother asks this titular question. Bauer focuses the reader’s attention on John’s inner monologue:
((John))
“Ethel all the time asking
That question
If I answer, I’ll lose my daughter
If I don’t, I’ll lose my wife.”
Estranged family members cannot communicate with one another; the father feels trapped; the mother and daughter struggle to connect. Mirrored on the next page is a description of a haircut. “Scissored” captures the metaphor of one’s dreams literally falling to the floor in the shape of gray chunks. We cannot glue our follicles to our head. Similarly, our dreams grow, change, are fulfilled, or meet the garbage can.
“…so jaunty and hopeful, that hair, how full of ideas
and life,
how soon it will be cut.”
The description of the fallen hair on one page gives way to a circle of empty fold out chairs in a church basement. Only a few figures sit in the seats – the smell of “blackberry brandy” in the air is the only clue to purpose, an AA meeting, but not all are in attendance. Bauer builds intensity to the true subject of this book: an alcoholic father. The daughter attempts to “parcel” out one word responses from the father at a Country Kitchen breakfast; he’s more talkative to army buddies, trading stories about Korea and flings with the opposite sex than he is to his own daughter.
And then, just like that, he is gone.
The narrative is propelled forward by poems like “Sweat” and “Cleaning out Dad’s Wallet”: the remaining daughter must resolve loss and gouged out holes in her life. She fills the spaces, the rooms, her heart, with whatever she can muster. She holds onto coins that her father gave to her daughter, “Olivia,” touching the metal, knowing they were in his pocket once. She cleans her father’s house with her sister erasing smells of a ghost that never let them in literally and figuratively.
From “Sweat:”
“My dad stopped bathing three years before
we found him
gaping at eternity on the basement floor…”
“The day they put the sheet on him
we girls scrubbed that house
from cracked plaster ceiling
to carved wooden baseboards.
We laundered and steamed and bleached,
pitched with regret
the vinyl chair with cushions dented and blackened
in the shape of his body, but
part of Dad twined with the house years ago.”
In cleaning, the speaker erases what her father left behind, blindly fills it with bleach, the new surfaces gleaming from her own fingers, a clean slate, but also different. Some of Bauer’s poems contain numbered lists: a format for an attempt at clarity. A list by definition contains only what matters. But Bauer’s speaker infuses her list with the weighted pain of a girl who wanted and needed a little more understanding, a little more time.
From “Cleaning out Dad’s Wallet:”
“3. No credit cards, no super shopper cards, no plastic of any persuasion.”
4. Drivers’ license, dry-docked since child-on-bicycle near tragedy…”
5. In the crevice behind the license holder, a photo’s edge.
In black and white, an infant, gray fontanel edges atop her head
In relief on a white sheet…
Your slanting slashes identify me: Anne Therese…”
Bauer literally sees herself in her father’s pocket: this paternal symbol, the wallet—a billfold that is a snapshot of a life, her baby picture resides there- innocence as the first placeholder of memory. Now, in adulthood, the photo joins its place amongst responsibility and burden. Throughout Bauer’s collection, there is the absence of words. The right words, the unspoken words, reassuring words, words we learn to say to get by. In the poem “My Father Taught Me,” Bauer writes:
“How to work. I couldn’t get out of bed
and I did anyway. I couldn’t sing along
So I mouthed the words.
My fingers curled, ponderous and stiff,
around my buttons, so many on a white-collar Oxford
shirt…”
“Words tore from my throat,
I can’t do this
but I typed in my password, read, responded, repeated.”
Bauer bows her head, buttons up her stark white shirt and takes her place in the rat race, tries to be a good citizen, keeps her mouth shut, doesn’t complain. It is in the last poem “Love = Free Milk” that Bauer lists out all of the things her father did do- she fills the pages with good deeds, unselfish acts, humorous anecdotes. Memories such as:
“He took out a loan to buy plane tickets – one over, two back – to
Come and get me when I ran away to Seattle and had not one word
of rebuke…”
“Twice a week he ordered too much milk from the delivery
Truck and then demanded I come over and get the excess before it
went bad. Love = free milk.”
Bauer had her own monetary list that she also notes in “Love=Free Milk.” She admits she needed to pay her father back all the money she owed him for the years prior. She writes, ”He knew I needed to amend things, and he let me set my own price for freedom.” But is this itemization enough for Bauer? It will have to be. She ends with:
“He died surrounded by the people who loved him, who still had more questions than answers.”
Bauer’s speaker manifests a fierce resolve throughout the book. Like a snake biting its own tail, however, I cannot help but linger on her words in the powerful first poem “All of This Burning.” Bauer’s almost prophetic words sound like a classic saying from the past. If only we could all feel so stable in coming to terms with ourselves and our relationships:
“Those who love me
will love me still.
Those who don’t
never will.”
went to NYU, but currently lives in the DC area with her family. She is the author of three chapbooks: Every Her Dies (ELJ Publications,) Clotheshorse (Finishing Line Press, 2014,) and Backyard Poems (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2015.) Recent work can be seen / is forthcoming at Toad Suck Review, The Poetry Storehouse, Flapperhouse, Pretty Owl Poetry, Yes, Poetry, Gargoyle Magazine, Jet Fuel Review, Uprooted: an Anthology on Gender and Illness, LunaLuna and Hobart.
