American Book Review

The poems in Elizabeth Metzger's Bed "confront and question the very limits of body and mind" (jacket copy). Language presents itself as an imperfect liaison between the two as the speakers in Bed look for the words to negotiate the boundaries between body and mind. The speakers in this collection combine unflinching courage and sensitivity to explore themes such as isolation, despair, and longing for a future that is simultaneously uncertain and full of opportunity. This collection wrestles with the hard questions of self-interrogation—the pitfalls of language to describe the boundaries of mind and body—while also acknowledging its necessity.

Metzger's collection appropriately begins with an epigraph from Franz Kafka: "Dread of night. Dread of not-night." This dichotomy of existing on the edge or in-between two entities is a prevailing theme of the collection. It is a conflict immediately pressed to the forefront of the poems as the speakers search for the words to navigate their experiences. The struggle to put words to ambiguity and uncertainty is arguably one of the most important parts of a poet's work. Negotiating the boundaries between language, the body, and emotional experience is a daunting task, but one with which this collection succeeds spectacularly.

We can see this in the collection's poem "Won Exit," in which the speaker reflects on language as well as the consequences of choices made and being stuck between the present and the future: "I opened the door with the prize/only to find the prize was not worth the life/I wanted the door." For the speaker, the door itself is a prize, representative of the freedom to move forward from one stage of life to another. The door is itself a portal of opportunity, even if what lies beyond may seem lackluster by comparison. In addition to choices, the poem reflects on putting words to the speaker's experiences. [End Page 161] The end of the poem seems to strike a commentary on language, struggling to find the words to put oneself and one's navigations into a narrative:

With both skill and sensitivity, the speaker touches on the topic of wordlessness. But that which has evaded definition does not make the speaker flinch or look away. This speaker is not satisfied with wordlessness and does not give in to the easy path of simply saying that finding words is impossible. Instead, Metzger's speaker leans into the challenge, making a concerted effort to try putting words to oneself and one's experience of an uncertain future.

In "On a Clear Night" the speaker leans further into interrogations of language, namely, whether a word can be, or even rightly express, the entity that it represents, when it begins, "I have broken our heart again. I have made the animal/noise the animal." This commentary is analogous with a conversation about the nature of language. The animal noise to which the speaker refers is a signifier, much like a word or concept expressed using language. What the poem immediately sets out to do is set up a dichotomy between the word or "animal noise" and the subject-object that it symbolizes. What the poem forces the reader to question is whether the signifier can ever be the signified. The speaker goes on, "Do you see my relationship to my face?/I wish to pull myself out of it." In a masterful display of weaving words, this poem connects the conversation about language with another, equally prevalent theme in the collection: the boundaries of the body and the self. In Bed, language is both the word and more than a word; the self is both body and more than a body; and both dichotomies are simultaneously substance and shadow, or "night and not-night."

However, one does not need to be a linguistic philosopher to enjoy the...