The Detective's Chair by Anne Carson, Liquid Amber Press, 2022
In trying to pin down the inspiration for where a poem might come from, the late Dorothy Porter (to whom this book is dedicated) once related the story that one of her students, a murderer in Long Bay gaol, suggested that a novel could be told in haiku. This lead her, apparently, to the germ of an idea – a crime novel told in verse, which became The Monkey's Mask. Aesthetic ideas can come from the most unlikely sources, even Long Bay gaol. Anne Carson has used this notion as the catalyst for an exploration into famous fictional detectives told in verse, or more specifically, prose poetry.
Detective fiction is hardly a traditional subject for poetry, yet there is clearly a perennial fascination with crime and crime solving. The Detective's Chair exploits the conceit that the 32 detectives presented here do most of their reflecting, cogitating, puzzling, meditating and nutting-out in the embrace of a favourite chair. Furthermore, that these personal sanctuaries, or perhaps novelistic props, utilise the same processes required in the composition of a poem.
Since perhaps the first detective novel in The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins there has been a dazzling array of literary sleuths and investigative methods. Carson's selection doesn't pretend to be all encompassing, there are too many for that, she acknowledges these are merely her favourites.
She does not attempt to mimic the style of the original novels, nor the voices of their protagonists. The style is all her own, crisp, succinct and clear. Occasionally a whiff of hardboiled Philip Marlowe creeps in, as in the voices of Cliff Hardy (p. 29), John Rebus (p. 51), or Peter Temple's Joe Cashin (p. 19), but this is no bad thing. It reminds us that detective poetry as well as detective fiction is its own neat genre. Carson even goes so far as to cast herself, in a Walter Mittyesque reinvention, as a Poet D. I. in the final poem to make the analogy crystal clear.
Throughout she exploits to great effect the clichés of the genre. There is plenty of booze, nicotine, tortured spirits, disdain for wealth and power. There are also enticing snippets of narrative, like reading the blurbs for the next Netflix episode.
3 am. Chicago. Something's fishy in the senator's office.
These moments can lead to some comic imagery, such as 'Commissaire Maigret':
Before sleep he resets moustache points with fixer and hot tongs.
Carson aims to capture the spirit of the characters she has adopted, to get inside their fictitious skin. For example,
Only her first Melbourne day, and already she's bought a flamboyant satin and fur ensemble from a city courier.
This description captures Miss Phrynne Fisher precisely. Other detectives are equally vivid, Miss Marple, Jane Tennison, Kurt Wallandar and so forth. Good sleuthing if you can guess the identity of another of these detectives from her use of the single word "Pet."
The architecture of the 'poem/paragraphs' is clearly presented as a sequence of self-contained prose poems. In her endorsement Kerry Greenwood describes the poems as vignettes, which is a good way to look at them. The layout of each poem is fully justified, as in a page from a novel. Each consists of fourteen lines, each is in the third person present tense. There is a uniform consistency in the form which lends a sense of coherence to the series. Between the tone of the prose poem and the sonnet the language leans more towards the prosaic rather than the lyrical. This may suit some readers who know and love their plain speaking detectives. Carson makes good use of the vernacular.
Does she even twig he's gone?
It makes her antsy.
Although there are some lovely lyrical images such as
the Great Kalahari's wild smell keen in her nose.
the wind's sharp whip.
Or where Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski
collapse[s] into bed where nightmares rake her to sleep.
Either way, such images make for accessible, satisfying reading.
However, let us not neglect the chairs. The chairs assume an increasing significance in the various ways the detectives use them to filter clues. That is, they become places of contemplation, psychological snapshots of inspectors at rest, all with their own personal demons, about to spring into action. The poems are complemented by a series of evocative illustrations by Rene Carrasco which make the book a fascinating collaboration. Mostly the chairs are depicted literally, as described in the poems with their various details, but sometimes for these bobbies a place of contemplation can be a log on the banks of the Mekong, a rickshaw or a Bentley, a bed or an ashtray. Both the drawings and the poems have the spirit of brevity about them each supporting the other. These are moments of reflection rather than action.
The biggest metaphoric leap Carson asks of the reader is her premise that solving a crime (albeit a fictional one) is analogous to writing a poem, or vice versa. That is, sifting through clues, ideas, symbols, drafts, what Carson calls "poem – spoor," until a solution is achieved.
- how solving crimes unfold, is the way poems evolve.
Of course there will be lacunas. The reader will have their own 'but what about…?' There is no Sherlock Holmes or Kinsey Millhone. For me I missed Raymond Chandler in the line-up. However, this is not about what's missing, but what's there, which more than makes up for any absences. In a way her specificity she speaks for all detectives. The selection is quirky, idiosyncratic and representative of the genre, which gains a new lease of energy from Carson's poetic attention. She has clearly had a lot of fun in deconstructing her chosen gumshoes. The result is most entertaining. Case closed.
- Mark O'Flynn
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Mark O'Flynn's novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon (UQP) was short listed for the Miles Franklin Award, 2017. A collection of short stories Dental Tourism appeared in 2020. His recent collections of poems are Undercoat, (Liquid Amber Press, 2022), and Einstein's Brain (Puncher & Wattmann, 2022).
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The Detective's Chair by Anne Carson is available from https://liquidamberpress.com.au/product/the-detectives-chair/
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