"THE FIRST FLAG," by Sarah Fox Coffee House Press, 151 Pages, $15.95
In her second book,"The First Flag," Sarah Fox subverts the notion of a poem as a single, unified text. She uses collage, footnotes and fragmentation to create poly-vocal works with both visual and textual elements.
Each section has at least three epigraphs and dozens of footnotes. The epigraphs suggest Fox writes as part of a motley, self-made community of thinkers. Footnotes at the end of sections invite the reader to flip between notes and poem, thus participating in meaning-making.
Fox draws from feminist thinkers, Eastern philosophy and mysticist. "Difficulty at the Beginning" takes its name from the "I Ching" and is an astrological chart dotted with phrases including a quote from the author's baby journal: "Sarah's right jaw was swollen … and red from the forceps."
A practicing doula, Fox writes about the violence of western medicine and how it treats women's bodies as poisoned and monstrous. Her father, a surgeon, "cuts holes into people's bodies" and dismisses his daughter as "just a doula."
The binary between herself and her father doesn't last. She writes, "It was my own father / he'd crept a part of himself / unto my safekeeping."
The body — disarticulated and mangled — is present throughout. Her long poem "Comma" is printed over anatomical drawings; figures with skin peeled back to reveal organs. The speaker imagines sticking her "fist through the hole sawed / into his ribcage and [forming] a pretend / organ," and a patient "screams / himself a new body, rough flesh disgorging from its animal stone."
These well-wrought images showcase Fox's skill with rendering image — a fundamental of poetry that she doesn't subvert.