Leaps and Bound Logic

Quinn continuedfrom previous page Even Zeppo's world is defined by victimization (and there is the punning echo ofthat other Marxism both in Mazur's use ofZeppo's family name and the older brothers' "rioting subversions"). But Zeppo revolts against the existing order: once, on tour in Omaha, when Groucho had appendicitis, Zeppo painted the greasepaint mustache above his lip, roughed-up his slick black hair, donned black-rimmed glasses, and brought the house down. The audience never knew— no one knew Zeppo could be as unzipped as his zany unloved older brother. (Was that his zenith or his nadir?) He never had that chance again— "He was so good," Groucho was known to say, "it made me get better quicker!" The speaker seeks a connection to Zeppo—although fleeting, as Zeppo's coup will be tolerated for one night only, and his marriage to Marion Benda, Mazur's distant cousin, will not last. Through this connection and the aesthetic acceptance of her own wit, the narrator seeks to escape the memory of victimization (even as a clever peasant protagonist turns the tables in a folktale). But Mazur also appeals to Marion Benda, who was "Replaced" and "forgotten.... Her life not so unlike yours or mine, or Zeppo's"—an apt muse for a poet who frequently laments the transient nature ofinspiration and subjectivity . In the end, however, we are left with the image ofZeppo onstage: a manifestation ofthe poet's desire not so much for glory, but to overcome despair. Robert Pinsky has identified an element of "metaphysical pathos" in the title poem of this collection . Perhaps, as she inverts systems through the recognition ofunlikely correspondences, Mazur also sometimes exhibits apower akin to metaphysical wit, as in "Night Visitation": I think by day you're the blue dragonfly, a darning needle, stingless, harmless, your fierce wings transparent , your tiny square head only engaged in eating's nervy mechanics— or is it bobbing in dread of me? Are my yard's mosquitoes delicacies for you, rare ambrosial delights?— or is it for me you track their humming's bloody, hazy, unwholesome dirge? Oh, mother, can that be you— Mazur's conceit allows her to better understand her old tormentor and reverse their power relation; a mother's simmering resentment has changed her into a mosquito-eating insect, and she finds herself "stingless" and "harmless" in her new existence. Wit is not merely comic relief in terms ofa tonal contrast; wit also brings relief. Throughout this volume, Mazur relies heavily on narrative—but if she employs a so-called "plain style," her syntax is deceptively simple. If narrative establishes an order, Mazur's use of metaphysical wit both overturns and creates systems based on the poet's recognition of strange, but striking, commonalities . But Mazur also occasionally brings disintegrative and narrative impulses together. Like many of the poems in Mazur's collection, "Black Ducks" contemplates the problem of fleeting inspiration: Bare vines cling to the windows, winter's calligraphy casting abstract verse on the sunny floor until clouds eclipse my conceit—a narrative's fleeting chinoiserie. Eye, and mind's eye, want to restore something that's been erased, never to be retold. Mazur turns to her surroundings to recover a silenced narrative, and finds a group ofducks trying to survive in winter. The quick psychic moves and abandonments of this poem allow the poet to finally recover what has been lost: I say, too late, what you wanted me to say: I miss you. At my back, Commercial Street's closed shops, its low white houses blur and disappear. Snow hasfilled the doorways with rice.... This final image is rich with possibility, and is the culmination of forged and broken connections that allow Mazur to articulate what might have otherwise been suppressed. Yet sometimes Mazur's poems are too associative , leading to a sense ofverbosity. Mazur may share this trait with her mentor, as Lowell supposedly said to William Carlos Williams that he sought a "carpentry ofdefinite meter that tells me when to stop rambling." In "At First, They," a tendency towards reportage may even undermine Mazur's fulgurations: At first, they leaned toward me at the bassinet, we wheeled...