Rodent Angel

Debra Weinstein

Seems to me, these days, there are so many literary awards out there that all one has to do is come up with a manuscript, pay the appropriate entry fees, and you're bound to walk away with an award or two. It might not be the Pulitzer or the National Book Award, but there's something out there for just about everyone. In this case, Debra Weinstein's collection Rodent Angel won the Mamdouha S. Bobst Literary Award (or the Elmer Holmes Bobst Literary Award, depending on whether you're reading the cover or the awards page), presented to “individuals who have brought true distinction to the American literary scene.” It then goes on to list a few of the former recipients, including Toni Morrison, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Edward Albee, among others. The three winners for 1996 were Weinstein (poetry), Lori Baker (short stories), and Don Judson (novella). I doubt anyone is likely to equate the three latter names with the four former, on the scale of literary and popular reputation. Having now read Weinstein's spare collection for the second time, I can see where the comparison might well be warranted from a strictly empirical point of view.

Winstein's poetry is a powerful thing, full of visceral images that practically steam off the page:

…I remember fearing
it would coast down Broadview Drive
with me in tow, fearing
the squirrel who would
climb into a carriage and suck
a baby's face
for milk….

Put enough of this together in a manuscript, even if that manuscript is only seventy-two pages long, and it's bound to make an impression. Certainly, in its darkness, comparisons to the work of Oates are warranted.

Weinstein's weakest point is in repetition. There is a fine line, admittedly, between a book of one's work exploring a theme and a book of one's work being repetitive. And perhaps what brings out the repetition in this one is the very strength and shock of the images mentioned above as a strength; when one of the images to which the poet returns is a dead squirrel on the sidewalk, it makes one hell of a stronger impression than does, say, Philip Levine's use of rain. However, one way or the other, there are places where Weinstein definitely crosses the line; the best example of this being the two line poem “Mother Eye:”

You said, “A woman loves her child more
than her husband.” You did not say “I.”

…compared with a piece of the book's central piece, “In the Year of the Stopped Car:”

“A woman loves her child
more than her husband.”
My mother sat me on the queen-
sized bed. “Let's keep
this our secret,” she said.

It is, of course, possible (if not obligatory) to pull off that kind of repetition in a long poem; in a manuscript of short poems, especially when they are quick, imagist blasts like the poems here, it comes off as a weakness instead of a strength.

That said, there is much here for the reader with a stronger stomach than most to appreciate. Weinstein has a fine command of language, to be sure, and the work here is liable to stick with a reader long after the turn of the final page. One that has had me looking for another book from Weinstein since I first bought it back in 1997.