Permitting Shame, Error and Guilt, Myself the Single Source

Brian Blanchfield is one of my favorite living poets and you should definitely check out his 2014 collection A Several World if you haven’t already and if you like difficult poetry. Proxies is a collection of his essays and nowhere near as difficult as A Several World. So if you're not into difficult poetry, you may still enjoy Proxies.

I’m writing this review in the manner in which Blanchfield claims to have written Proxies: without any source material at my disposal, without any research documents or open websites, and without a copy of Proxies nearby. Consequently, I have no idea if I’m remembering the details or titles of Blanchfield’s essays correctly, or if I’m getting all my facts wrong.

That’s part of the risky fun of Proxies, because in each essay you’re watching Blanchfield riff on a topic without recourse to Wikipedia or an iPhone or any other fact-checking implements. He is, as he says, the single source for every essay in the book. (Blanchfield does correct his most egregious and/or compelling errors in a long section at the end, a section entitled “Corrections,” which lacks any narrative structure but makes for good skimming.)

In other words, Proxies is as much a work of performance art as it is a collection of essays. If we take him at his word that he didn’t consult any outside sources while writing these essays, then we have the pleasure of reading a great writer choose a prompt (usually a single word—like “frontage” or “asymptote” or “pentecostal”) and then compose an essay around the prompt, weaving in and out of definitions (some of which may be mistaken) and details (some of which are probably wrong) for the purpose of personal reflection and gorgeous autobiography. Usually, by the end, these definitions, details, and reflections synthesize into something cohesive and poignant. It’s acrobatic and fun to watch/read.

For me, the most moving and often most painful essays in Proxies deal with Blanchfield’s relationships with family, including his parents and his chosen family. The stories he tells about his childhood in the American South, about his mother and father and stepfather, gutted me. Blanchfield's feelings of shame and guilt are at their peak in those essays about family...although those same essays are also some of the most frustrating in the volume, because Blanchfield is perfectly comfortable (as he should be) playing the role of the misunderstood gay poet-academic who whines about being a misunderstood gay poet-academic.

For instance: when he talks about his mother’s incredulity at his decision to become a career poet, Blanchfield sounds a little too much like me, an academic complaining that his parents don’t understand how tenure works, don't understand what “assistant professor” means, and don't understand why a highly educated person would accept a visiting professorship at the Southwestern North Dakota Technical School of Mining and Cowshit when he could’ve just applied for a normal teaching job at Stanford or the University of Michigan.

That’s how jobs work, right?

In such moments, Blanchfield’s tone can veer into Will Smith’s “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” And here’s the thing: parents just don’t understand. But, to quote the legendary drug addict Dr. Prof. Jordan Peterson, “Deal with it, bucko.”

Another theme in Proxies that grates on me, a theme I alluded to above, is place. For Blanchfield, this means romanticizing his youthful days in New. York. City. The Big Apple, as people in Utah call it. Specifically: Blanchfield lived in Brooklyn. Yikes! An essay about a poet’s life in Brooklyn would normally turn me off an entire volume of essays, no matter the other topics, but it’s a testament to Blanchfield’s writing prowess that I kept reading and enjoying the book.

And to his credit: Blanchfield writes about the South and the flyover West with a great deal of nuance and some affection. So I can forgive his nostalgia for his time in New York.

As I write this review, I realize that I’m remembering the parts of Proxies that I didn’t like more than the parts that I liked. This probably gives you the impression that I didn’t like the book as much as my rating would suggest. That’s a mistake, and the fault is mine. I remember discomfort and annoyance better than I remember beauty: it's a moral failing I have. But Proxies is a volume full of vulnerability and sorrow and all kinds of loveliness. Blanchfield is a serious poet and a serious thinker, and these essays benefit from both his facility with language and his intellectual rigor. Check it out.