{"id":3421,"date":"2013-08-28T21:31:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T21:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=3421"},"modified":"2022-10-25T13:15:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T17:15:39","slug":"california","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/california\/","title":{"rendered":"California"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"California<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 84 pages \u2022 15.95
\nISBN-13:\u00a0\u00a0978-1-935536-08-6<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/column]<\/p>\n

California<\/em><\/h1>\n

Jennifer Denrow<\/h2>\n

Jennifer Denrow\u2019s California<\/em>, a tragicomic collection arranged in three \u201cacts,\u201d explores the\u00a0obsessive nature of humanity while calling in to question the creation of our realities: \u201cYou put your\u00a0thumb in front of your eye. \/ This is the world now,\u201d writes Denrow in the second act. In the third act, a\u00a0section comprised of letters between the late ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (father of author Candice\u00a0Bergen) and his dummy Charlie, Denrow delves deeper into this question of created reality. In one\u00a0poem, the dummy instructs the ventriloquist on how to be real: \u201cYou\u2019re allowed to move your lips. \/ I\u00a0will teach you to become human\u2026\u201d Interspersed with quotes from Candice, (\u201cBecause he was nothing\u00a0without my father.\u201d) the poems carefully navigate the murky waters of where art and artist begin and\u00a0end. \u201cDoes anyone ever call you Edgar?\u201d the ventriloquist asks. \u201cSometimes \/ they call me Charlie just\u00a0to be cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Varying between long, overflowing lines and short, truncated lines, the poems in this brilliant\u00a0debut collection ventriloquize the tangential and fragmented way we think. Images recycle obsessively\u00a0as Denrow\u2019s speakers fixate on the sky, birds, trees, and in the title poem, “California”: \u201cIf California\u00a0didn\u2019t exist, I\u2019d still want to go there,\u201d the narrator tells us before her dependency on California becomes\u00a0a question of sanity: \u201cI suspect that I\u2019m the problem. \/ He says I want to abandon our animals; he says\u00a0I\u2019m crazy. \/ I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m crazy \/ I just feel like someone who wants to go to California.\u201d The\u00a0reader understands that it is not California the speaker craves specifically, but rather an imaginative departure. These speakers endeavor to find significance in the world around them, and while they often\u00a0cannot, they continue to struggle towards a resolution for this inability. Denrow’s labyrinthine collection,\u00a0where you can’t tell the dummy from the ventriloquist, the state from the State, whirls us around its\u00a0prison of language and imagination, wheeling towards attempted escapes.<\/p>\n

If Reflection\u2028<\/em><\/p>\n

You can put anything in the sky.<\/p>\n

You can put yourself in the sky.<\/p>\n

And if that doesn\u2019t work,<\/p>\n

You can use a bird.<\/p>\n

There is so much to the world.<\/p>\n

Stop taking apart the sky.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

When I tell people about the sky<\/p>\n

They say, yes, we know.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 84 pages \u2022 15.95 ISBN-13:\u00a0\u00a0978-1-935536-08-6 Add to Cart [\/column] California Jennifer Denrow Jennifer Denrow\u2019s California, a tragicomic collection arranged in three \u201cacts,\u201d explores the\u00a0obsessive nature of humanity while calling in to question the creation of our realities: \u201cYou put your\u00a0thumb in front of your eye. \/ This is the world now,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3421","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3421"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18300,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3421\/revisions\/18300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}