Cradle and Spoon, Kate Spencer
Minor Works of Death Press, 2022
Across all of the intimate and intense terrain that is
covered in her debut collection, Kate Spencer consistently displays both
profound thoughtfulness and an admirable sense of intention. The first
publication from the exciting new press Minor Works of Death, Cradle and Spoon is the product of a
rigorous meditation on the nature and capacities of poetry. This is not
speculation on my part; in an appended essay, Spencer makes explicit many of
the key premises which informed the book’s creation, and grounds her approach
concretely within the history of the medium. As both a jaggedly honest display
of emotion and an exposition of a particular approach to poetic writing, Cradle and Spoon is a fascinating work,
worthy of one’s careful attention.
As a collection of poetry, Spencer’s debut covers many of the most difficult
and ineliminable parts of the human experience, including parent-child
relationships, substance use, self-expression and repression, love, and
mourning. In particular, Spencer asserts her own specifically feminine relation
to all of these facets of life, and takes care to articulate the gendered
nuances of her experience through the confessional mode. The poet’s focus is
turned intently upon the humanity of herself and others; this leads to some admirably
wry portrayals of those who would misapprehend another person out of misogyny
or general insecurity. In “A Letter to Ted,” one of my favorite poems in the
collection, Spencer writes of the late Ted Hughes:
Work
to forget a maiden name,
two anniversaries, and the amount
you owe women you’ve made
into ghosts, and ghosts into poetry–
another masterpiece.
Stylistically Spencer’s work is
incredibly versatile, containing a variety of free verse approaches as well as
madrigals, villanelles, haikus, glosas, and variations on the sonnet form. One
frequently encounters startling, remarkable images, often delivered across
multiple lines - I could point to “Without
sleep, I hear the familiar, low drone of silence / sneak in under the crack of
the door, dying to erupt / into the madness of another week.” from “The
Winter After Frank’s Death” as an example. Many pieces in the collection are
tightly wound with irregular rhymes and sonic play, and a large number employ
some form of repetition, whether it be of a single word (e.g. “silver” in
“Inheritability”) or a deliberately imperfect repeating of the entire contents
of a piece (as in “Sleepwalk Palindrome”). The use of these poetic devices is
frequently supremely effective, as in “Thin-skin
vanity, my tougher tongue split / tight circles of details–sweat that inherits
/ all of the living.” from “A New Madrigal for an Old Coven or Beatitudes
for the Vain”. I did struggle at times with what seemed like an almost
relentless quality in some of the poems - the cascading alliterations and
internal rhymes would briefly become overbearing, as in “The ache wakes her again, / reaching for blindness, she / sews new
scabs each morning / to skew familial likeness.” from “The Creation Myth
(or Postpartum)”. Additionally, the poet’s occasional use of fairly graceless
end rhymes divorced from consistent metre (as in “Something Like Grace Kelly”
and “Her Loose Dress”) struck me as a pronounced weak point in the text.
Although these are mostly minor concerns, I did at times wonder if a given
poem’s subject would have been better served by a greater degree of stylistic
subtlety.
There were a few moments in Cradle and
Spoon which presented me with challenges, but this is entirely commensurate
with the level of rigour and attention which Spencer brings to her writing
practice. This is a book which interrogates poetry as a medium, and which is
committed to exploring the genre’s contours and boundaries; it is not
contentious to say that not every instance of such exploration will appear
successful to all readers. What cannot be denied is that Cradle and Spoon is a tremendously enjoyable book, and a worthwhile
read for anyone who is passionate about poetry. Spencer’s thoroughgoing
commitment to the medium, encompassing all of its ambiguities and
peculiarities, is a quality to which all of us should aspire.
Ethan Vilu (they/she) is a poet and editor from Calgary, Alberta. Their longsheet A Decision Re: Zurich was published by The Blasted Tree in 2020, and their poems and reviews have been featured in a variety of outlets. Ethan currently serves as both poetry editor and circulation manager for filling Station Magazine. She dearly hopes to one day play the Marine Park golf course in Brooklyn, and she can be found on twitter at @CNNSwitzerland.