Rabinowitz gives the answer in the title to the poem that puts the question: "THE LIGHT CANNOT BE EXPLAINED". This line recurs throughout the text. In another poem, she asks: "do they know / meaning need not be known / NOR THE LIGHT EXPLAINED"? Explanation is an exercise of power. Poetry, like scripture, can only be explained by doing violence to the text, by casting out nuance, by insisting upon either/or. But poetry, like scripture, is a place where paradox thrives. Try to fix its meaning, try to impose a neat coherence upon it, and the words fall dead.
Rabinowitz has a couple of habits which I find distracting. She enjoys playing free association games which connect disparate ideas through alliteration and rhyme. "Robed in R / wrapped in R / rapt by R / entrapped / and captive there". This kind of wordplay is not to my taste, but maybe it works here. After all, this volume celebrates the interruption, the dislocation, the emergence of newness from the unexpected; and that is precisely what free association aims at. So I will reserve judgment on this matter.
As well, she occasionally uses words which evoke a nostalgia for the romantic poets. The word "alas" makes an appearance, and the collection's title tempts me to place it on the shelf next to my Wordsworth. Maybe she really does have a flash of the Romantic in her. But a shifting sensibility may well work in this context, underscoring once again the paradoxical ground she treads between traditional believing and the fresh paths that women have found it necessary to lay down for themselves. So once again I will reserve judgment on the matter.
As one might expect, The Wanton Sublime speaks most directly to disaffected women from Christian faith traditions who struggle to reconcile received notions of believing with freer modes of being in the world. But that would circumscribe the book's audience too narrowly. It speaks more widely to anyone who cares about the way words intersect with belief.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!