Ordered Whimsy

American levïew" Ordered Whimsy Jennifer Hancock Wonder Cabinet David Barber TriQuarterly http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu 112 pages; cloth, $39.95, paper, $14.95 One opens David Barber's second book, Wonder Cabinet, with a little thrill. After all, the title conjures up the late-Renaissance rooms and cupboards in which the wealthy gathered all manner of natural and man-made oddities for the pure enjoyment of seeing them side-by-side. What delights, one wonders , lie inside? The book is indeed a constructed cabinet—or room—of wonders, with the same sense of ordered whimsy that was present in the original wonder cabinets. Those cabinets were the precursors to the modern museum, and Barber's book likewise is a perfectly planned collection. In the first (untitled) section, he is collecting men of science and devotion : Brother Adam the beekeeper (in "Eulogy for an Anchorite"); medieval monks ("Masters of the Florilegium"); botanist Luther Burbank ("From a Burbank Catalogue"); Incan scholar Fray Antonio de la Calancha ("Source"); and William Wells, who studied dew ("Ode to William Wells"). In the second section, "New World Sutras," Wonder Cabinet collects the men (and one cartoon) who performed the magic acts and amazing feats wondered at in the early 20th century, including Harry Houdini, Karl Wallenda, Buster Keaton, Babe Ruth, and Krazy Kat. And in the third (untitled) section one finds, in large part, a collection of memories of childhood in southern California, and of the objects (railway car, record player, birds nest, and horse chestnuts) that make up the detritus of that childhood. While a sense of wonder, of course, is the strongest emotional note throughout the book, Barber's wit is very much in evidence as well. It works on different levels, though, in part perhaps due to the poet's distance (perceived or otherwise) from his subject. The best poems, for example, are those in which the speaker reveals a personal experience of or connection to the object of wonder. In these poems, Barber's highly crafted wordplay supports and expands the reader's understanding ofthe poem, rather than being merely decoration. Take, for example, the poem "Funicular." Like many poems in the book, this one is about something (or someone) that is not what it appears to be—in this case, "it" is the Angel's Flight railway in Los Angeles, which, as Barber describes it, seems to be a railway to heaven, or perhaps merely a better life, but is in actuality a circular track. When one car goes up, another goes back down to the valley. The wit, of course, is rooted in wordplay (as in the many different variations on the word "angels" throughout the poem), but it reveals a deep understanding ofthe character of the city: of the irony of a railway that goes almost to heaven but not quite, of the parallel "white flight" to the hills, and of the understanding that the whole concept of the thing (and the word "funicular" itself) are perfect fodder for Hollywood, "Where legions of funnymen plied their trade." The poem ends where it began, the two counterweight trolley cars having passed each other on the trip, and the speaker sums up the city in its comparison to the contraption: "You hang in the balance. That's how it works." In this and other poems (such as "Falcon Channel," "Tar Pit," and "Procrustean"), Barber uses his wit to illuminate something important about the American identity and about the sleight-of-hand of childhood. In the "New World Sutras," Barber also uses his wit to provide the reader with insights into some of the greatest American entertainers. While the focus on wordplay is still present—hence the groaner in "Great Stone Face Sutra," in which Buster Keaton is unfortunately admonished to "bust a move"—the wit in the sutras is deeper than the mere pun on the level of surprise and intuition about people who had public faces to hide their private ones. In the same poem, Keaton (famous for his deadpan expression while taking pratfalls in silent films) is described as "dumb like a sphinx." Here, Barber's wit reveals a deep understanding ofKeaton's talent. One reads the...