Blowout (Pitt Poetry Series)
Making art out of her life has worked very well for Duhamel, whose mostly long-lined, prosy, conversational poems have customarily trod a thin line between laughter and tears. The trouble with her modus operandi catches up with her in this collection, in which autobiographical determination obliges her to write about the end of her marriage, her subsequent depression, but also, fortunately, finding a new love. Like divorce, these poems aren’t that funny. But if this collection seems more narrowly focused, it still brims with Duhamel’s characteristic fixations—language (the British slang of “My New Chum”), poor or at least pathetic everyday behavior (losing hundreds between the ATM and her car), pop culture (movies, TV, eBay, pole dancing), unpleasant erotic memories (“Kindergarten Boyfriend,” “Or Whatever Your Final Destination May Be,” “Victor”)—and still presents the miracle of how serious a life embedded in humdrum and commercialized reality can be. In fact, one poem in particular, “Worst Case Scenario”—a solid block of successive personal disasters—negatively apotheosizes just such embeddedness. It takes your breath away. --Ray Olson