Here's
the thing: I originally bought The Cowardice of Amnesia because
the author, Ellyn Maybe, is fat. Ellyn Maybe is fat and she's
from Berkeley and she writes poems about being fat and being from
Berkeley. I could relate to this, as I had been trying to end
my close relationship with about 80lbs. for some time then, and
my beloved hometown of San Francisco is just one BART ride away
from the strangely potent incense sticks of Telegraph Ave. I could
relate. It was around the time of the first Bridget Jones' Diary,
and I was just not feeling Bridget the way all of my other friends
were. Still, I too, needed a vice for self-deprecation, and that's
where Ellyn Maybe came in. If you've ever been a fat girl from
the Bay Area---hell, a fat girl, a trashy girl, a pretty girl
with excessive armpit hair…just an outsider, period---you will
get this poetry like you have never gotten poetry in your life.
The
first poem I read from The Cowardice of Amnesia, was "He Kisses
Girls Just Cause They're Blond", and who the hell wouldn't turn
right to page 40 to read that shit? The first sentence goes: He
kisses girls just cause they're blond / because he knows I have
brown hair. I used to chant that to myself whenever I was pissed
off about guys and about how little respect they gave me. It made
a lot of sense to me at the time, when I was trying desperately
to make a relationship work with this man who was still in love
with his ex-girlfriend. Fortunately, the guy didn't work out,
but the book stayed, like a fuschia reminder of that valiant day
when I finally said, "Well, forget your pseudo-Buddhist ass, then."
Ahem.
You'd
be surprised how many stanzas from The Cowardice of Amnesia that
I can link directly to a last conversation of a failing relationship,
Chinese food binges, far left political debates with my non-too-bright
sibling, numbers on weight scales and quiet moments spent in front
of the bathroom mirror, just looking and waiting for something
not so…quiet. Ellyn Maybe writes the way you would imagine a journey
in and out of your subconscious would be, like most days are when
you haven't had too much caffeine. It's nice to read about a laid
back, fat girl who isn't sad, isn't taking the high road no matter
what, but rather, hanging out, making ends meet and not caring
that the guy in the White House will never kiss her baby. It's
nice to know that being fat doesn't mean I have to overcompensate
by running the world.
If
you know Ellyn Maybe's work, you know that sometimes she can go
off on a tangent, leaving you to wonder what the poem was about
in the first place. But for those who don't need the structure,
it's a nice change from some of poetry's pretentious relatives.
Give it a wink.
