Review: Making Maxine's Baby

There’s something preternaturally “New Yorkish” about the poems in Caroline Hagood’s collection Making Maxine’s Baby that I can’t help but think I’ve passed her main character on the sidewalk. At least once. And if I’d spoken with her, I’m sure I would have both liked her and wanted to help her, though I’m not sure I’d have been capable. Indeed, I might have had those feelings and still followed my own path.

The highly readable collection follows the mental meanderings of the nomadic Maxine. Though the character is clearly well read and intelligent, she chooses to live on the streets and in the subways of the city, sleeping on rat-pee-saturated mattresses. Within the collection, images of mermaids, horror movie intestines, and zombies are interspersed with real-life horrors of murders, sexual abuse, and gore.

While at times it is hard for me to believe that a creature like Maxine could exist – how could such an insightful, intelligent woman choose to live such a life of instability? – I suspect it says more about my ignorance of the thorough damage that abuse and neglect can deliver. At times, the collection reads like a fast-paced novel, and I needed to slow down, as there was so much going on that even now I feel insecure and inadequate to describe. Hagood’s deft writing takes classical and contemporary imagery and weaves a poem in danger of being a page-turner.

Beneath everything is lust

for the slurp and suck

of changing molecules,

extreme makeover shows,

the lure of the beyond. It’s why

Maxine hitchhiked America the summer

after freshman year, but now she lives

in a subway tunnel, simultaneously seen

and unseen, an undetectable horse leaving

mysterious tracks in the mud.

She used to be on the honor role

but now she does Dante in different voices,

had to go down, ask the dead for answers.

Throughout the collection, Hagood sprinkles common images, themes, and mythologies. Mermaids, internal organs, blood, bees, duality, horror movies, trauma, and, of course, children populate her world of ideas and metaphors.

Perhaps my dual comfort and awkwardness in Maxine’s presence is summed up in Hagood’s description of her as

the kind of person

who’s always ripped open.

…

She knows no other way.

Indeed, if I had passed Maxine on the streets of New York, I’d have felt guilty for both looking to see if I recognized her and for avoiding her; I’d pray the poor creature could find solace and safety and I’d hate myself for being incapable of offering any. And had she read my mind, perhaps she’d have spewed scorn upon me for thinking any of her troubles were about me, per se.

Screw you and your credentials.

I have an MFA in vapor and urban

reek, have been featured in anthologies

of knock-knock jokes and engine

sounds, have a degree in failing

spectacularly, won a Pushcart Prize

for blowing a man in one of the last

subway bathrooms. Oh the faces

he made, like a Halloween mask.

To me, Maxine is not an every woman. Whether the quest for motherhood is universal among women is not a topic of debate in this collection. Rather, Maxine explores herself, her world, her desires. It may indeed be hell this “Sorceress, scullery maid, poor excuse for a mer-thing” walks through, but her story draws me into a quest that may be my ruin.

I look forward to more from this talented writer.

Q&A: Poet Caroline Hagood

In my meanderings through life, I often catch myself getting distracted by unexpected beauty and wit, especially when I step my toes into the puddles of joy that are writers' blogs.

One writer I discovered quite by accident, Caroline Hagood, has graced the electronic pages of this blog, back when she was still blogging at Culture Sandwich, where she posted poems, book reviews, interviews, and thoughts on art and culture in general. These days, she’s in a Ph.D. program at Fordham University, but she recently had her first book of poetry, Lunatic Speaks published by FutureCycle Press. As the Elephant’s Bookshelf blog begins its new incarnation as a brief rest stop for writers and readers of all stripes, I thought it fitting to allow a poet to deliver the invocation.

EB: How long have you been writing poetry?

CH: I've "written" since I was a dyslexic kid who couldn't read or write for years after everyone else, and my mom was kind and patient enough to write down my early "songs" that only she and my dad could possibly love.

EB: Do you follow a consistent process in your work or do you vary things as the ideas come?

CH: I try to type things into my electronic graveyard--what I call my computer file that's longer than I should ever share, which contains many unformed poem thoughts--every day. Then I try to form a finished poem out of this wreckage once a week. If anyone ever finds this password-protected document, I will feel very embarrassed and very sorry for them.

EB: Much of your work comes across as very personal. Do you fear you expose too much of yourself in your poetry or is there still a layer or two between you and your audience?

CH: There are definitely some layers there. I think people often assume that every (especially first person) poem is autobiographical, but, as others far sharper than I have noted, although there is always some kind of truth there, it just may not be conventionally factual. It would be like reading someone's dreams and thinking they all happened to the dreamer. For instance, although I wrote about it in my collection, I have never received a letter from a dinosaur, although I am very open to it.

And, yes, I fear that I expose too much of myself every day. My whole life is basically one big emotional risk, but I'm usually glad I took it.

EB: Thanks so much for sharing with us, Caroline.

CH: My pleasure.