Geist reviews The Inquisition Yours

Geist's Jordan Abel discusses Jen Currin's linguistic innovations in The Inquisition Yours.

Being Right Here
Jordan Abel

Jen Currin writes eloquently; she writes fervently - she writes irony and truth with alarming ease. In her latest books of poems, The Inquisition Yours (Coach House), language doesn't stick together in the usual ways but collides with itself and springboards into unexpected and striking terrain. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Currin's work is that the reader is lulled into her unique style through the familiar. Take the first section of "Twelve For Constancy" for example: "Absorbed by His Black Hat / I walk with the walrus through waves of sugar. He beat me to death in / a past life. Now I can guess his middle names. Face after face. I write / them down with my left hand." Or these lines from "The Order Of Permanent Ideas": "Bread-and-butter jobs, the simple foods / of monks. / He hadn't quite escaped yet. / His paintings show that. / Selling his library: / he had to eat. / It's completely chemical, he explained. / (His mother's suicide.)" Currin's writing is always surprising and often revelatory, punctuated by epiphanies and linguistic acrobatics. And although her work leans toward the avant-garde, anyone who wants to write will find this book an absolute joy to read.