{"id":11951,"date":"2021-05-14T14:53:16","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T13:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11951"},"modified":"2021-05-14T14:56:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T13:56:03","slug":"eduardo-c-corral-guillotine-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11951","title":{"rendered":"Eduardo C. Corral | Guillotine<\/em><\/strong> | reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eduardo C. Corral |\u00a0Guillotine<\/em>\u00a0| Graywolf Press: $16.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There is a sharp, tangy sense about Eduardo C. Corral\u2019s poems.\u00a0 Sometimes that tang is almost literal; these poems are never shy about talking about the senses at their most acute.\u00a0 But that tangy quality is part of the Corral\u2019s style, too.\u00a0 The poems are often organised in a stepped verse which cascades down the page.\u00a0 And the short lines are mirrored in short syntactical units.\u00a0 The cumulative effect is one of writing which is driven and punchy, stopping short of aggression but never less than forceful.<\/p>\n

That tang is present from the first page, in the poem \u2018Ceremonial\u2019, which begins,<\/p>\n

Delirious,
\ntouch-starved,
\nI pinch a mole
\non my skin, pull it
\noff, like a bead \u2013
\nI pinch & pull until
\nI am holding
\na black rosary.<\/p>\n

Further down the page, Corral describes a moment of touch,<\/p>\n

I can still feel
\nhis thumb \u2013
\nwarm,
\nburled \u2013 moving
\nin my mouth.
\nHis thumbnail
\na flake<\/p>\n

of sugar
\nhe would not
\nallow me to swallow.<\/p>\n

Corral has commented that it was three years before he felt he could allow this poem to \u2018go public\u2019. And it is certainly raw.\u00a0 It\u2019s ending is also very exposing, even as it describes putting on a particular type of clothing.\u00a0 The raw quality is not only in the use of the first person, what Corral calls the \u2018lyric persona\u2019 who narrates the poem.\u00a0 That nakedness is also held in the present tense which offers the reader the sense that all the action describe is utterly factual and certain.\u00a0 There is an inescapable quality to both the writing and the experiences it encodes.<\/p>\n

Corral has also commented that he was trying to encapsulate unrequited love.\u00a0 One of the ways in which he does that is to use animals as images of the way that love appears to the unfulfilled lover. In the title poem, Corral uses the image of scorpions who \u2018always arrive \/ at dawn.\u00a0 Gently, \/ their pincers \/ touch the cuts \/ on my lips\u2026 The scorpions \u2013 dark green, dank – \/ reach in, pull out \/ the razor blade \/ under my tongue.\u2019\u00a0 As we have seen, Corral is a very much a poet of detail.\u00a0 The experiences the \u2018lyric persona\u2019 undergoes are piercingly described.\u00a0 And the stepped verse controls the reader\u2019s reading speed so that each detail is piercingly felt, too.\u00a0 Note, too, that additional detail of the cuts to the lips.\u00a0 We might not know where those cuts come from, but Corral draws our attention to them, nonetheless.\u00a0 And our attention is forced to speculate on where their origin;\u00a0 an origin that might well not have been pleasant.\u00a0 Thus, the very title of the poem, and its contents and structure suggest a world in which relationships contain both emotional and actual violence.\u00a0 As Corral puts it towards the end of the poem, \u2018A threat, a reminder. \/ It\u2019s my task to stop yearning \/ for as long \/ as it takes them \/ to carry a blade \/ across my skin.\u2019 That guillotine falls not only on the relationship, but also on the desire that generates the relationship in the first place.<\/p>\n

The end of the book contains two poems which detail the experiences of illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States into drop houses.\u00a0 The first of these, \u20181707 San Joaquin Avenue\u2019 contains harrowing detail of the conditions of these drop houses.\u00a0 Its third part is a poem in the voice of one of the people traffickers.\u00a0 Given Corral\u2019s skill at describing physical sensations in the other poems, it is no wonder that this poem is a very frightening account of the behaviour of the trafficker. The final part of the poem juxtaposes the names of, we can assume, the trafficked immigrants, in large typefaces across one whole page.<\/p>\n

The final poem \u2018To Juan Doe #234\u2019 is, again, a poem of juxtapositions. This time the juxtaposition of the finding of body in the desert, with the funeral meal after the funeral, and then with the relationship between the narrator and what we assume is the narrator\u2019s brother.\u00a0 These juxtapositions are themselves broken down into smaller, contrasted images.\u00a0 Central to those contrasts is, again, the notion of flesh.\u00a0 Here, that flesh is the flesh that both falls off the body of the dead man and also the meat that is cooked slowly for the funeral meal.\u00a0 That shocking contrast is emphasized by Corral, \u2018when I read his flesh fell \/\/ off the bones, my stomach rumbled, \/ my mouth \/\/ watered.\u2019 What I take Corral to be suggesting is the complicity of the body and the voyeur who observes;\u00a0 that we cannot take our eyes away, no matter how devastating the loss.\u00a0 Corral is supremely adept at \u2018rubbing our eyes in it.\u2019\u00a0 But this book is never gratuitous, no matter how direct or how difficult the subject matter.\u00a0 This is not a book with many laughs.\u00a0 Its power, however, is undeniable.\u00a0 As a kind of primer on certain kinds of experience, these poems are almost unequaled.<\/p>\n

by Ian Pople<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eduardo C. Corral |\u00a0Guillotine\u00a0| Graywolf Press: $16.00 There is a sharp, tangy sense about Eduardo C. Corral\u2019s poems.\u00a0 Sometimes that tang is almost literal; these poems are never shy about talking about the senses at their most acute.\u00a0 But that tangy quality is part of the Corral\u2019s style, too.\u00a0 The poems are often organised in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nEduardo C. 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