Reading Jenn
McCreary’s doctrine of signatures,
one might expect that the immediate association from McCreary’s text would be
in the direction of Chris McCreary’s The
Effacements. The two are married, co-editors of Ixnay, and their texts even share
a common binding, having been published yin/yang style by Gil Ott’s Singing
Horse Press. Yet the book that kept popping up as antecedent in my imagination
as I read signatures was former
Philadelphia poet Pattie McCarthy’s bk of (h)rs, Like McCarthy, McCreary makes great
use of ye olde texts & concepts, employing them
as a framework through which to examine contemporary life.
The doctrine of signatures
itself is a concept that underlies most forms of herbal medicine, the notion
that plants have specific medicinal destinies & that these can in turn be
divined by the “signature” of the plant, if only one knows how to read it. The
classic example is the use of hepatica for ailments of the liver because the
plant itself is shaped roughly akin to a liver. One can find variants of this
in Islam & in ancient China
My sense is that Jenn McCreary uses this doctrine neither as an adept nor an
apprentice, but rather the way Jack Spicer once used baseball: as a lens
through which events come into focus or are refracted, & as a discursive
horizon. It’s a strategy that enables McCarthy – like Spicer before her – to
compose a lengthy serial poem that is deeply personal & to some degree
private in such a way as to convey its cohesion – & its deeper concerns –
to an outside reader who might well never have met the author.
On the surface, the poem as
a whole is divided into five sections, each of whose titles are bounded by
colons, a device that calls to mind Simon Perchik:
<![if !supportLists]>§
<![endif]>:pre
script:
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<![endif]>:whistling
in the dark:
<![if !supportLists]>§
<![endif]>:humors:
<![if !supportLists]>§
<![endif]>:receipts:
<![if !supportLists]>§
<![endif]>:a doctrine
of signatures:
Roughly speaking, these
sections are what they say they are. Yet, at a deeper level, the structure of doctrine is very different from this
five-part scheme – rather, the poem strikes me more as being built out of two
halves. The first half contains the first four sections combined, while the
second, slightly longer half is composed of only the final section. At one
level, I see the first four sections as setting up the second half, especially
since it contains one of the longest runs of great writing I’ve come across in
some time. Yet, in fact, some of the very best work in doctrine occurs in the “:receipts:”
section, so even as I type this I’m conscious that my description fails to do
the poem justice.
“:whistling in the dark:” to my reading is the theory section,
literally the statement of a thesis or problem, how to communicate from here
(where I am) to there (where you are). “:humors:” – the
one section of the book I’m not completely sold on – appears to stalk out a
range of options, cataloged precisely by the humors: blood, bile, choler &
phlegm. It’s the most descriptive section &, as such, feels the most
restrained. “:receipts:” just takes off – I read it initially
as a series of overheard (& one-sided) communications – it’s the passage
that brought Spicer’s serial poetry to mind. But there are
recipes here also, droll commentary, moments of horror, allusions to Charles
Olson. It’s among the richest six-page sets of writing one can imagine.
Until, that is, it gets just
blown away by the range & majesty & depth of the second half, the title
section of the poem. Consider these two passages:
4.
he said, you write like I cook – or try
to cook. I promise you a poem of domesticated
purslane, of
lettuces & lemons. I promise you
a poem
as perfect as a potato
is
perfect, that tastes like valium
feels &
turns the sky to honey
& lavender.
5.
we’ve
important work
to
do: cataloging, giving
things names,
putting to order
an unruly
home –
a
kitchen in the choirloft, a bedroom
in the
belfry. a
grotto,
in the
most proper
sense of the
word, juniper berries crushed
underfoot &
all that moss
spread out,
creeping
velvet
lichen.
we like
to be compelled
by things
& the things
compelling us
here
are true: the first was hung
by her
hair; the second
had her
hair set afire
& asphyxiated
on the
smoke & fla
deaths by
hair this week – which means
something, but
we know
not what.*
Both the passages themselves
& the broader contexts they throw into sharp relief work at every possible
level: as sound, as intellect, even as drama. At one level, one could
characterize a doctrine of signatures
as a love poem, a rare thing in these postmodern days. At another, it’s a
treatise on communication. On a third, it’s a remarkably detailed portrait of a
society, one that both is & is not our own. On a fourth, it’s a meditation
on the interaction between our own world & the nature that lurks in signature. On a fifth . . . well, you get
the idea. There’s an enormous amount of
stuff going on in this poem, so effortlessly written that the experience of
reading it feels like the consumption of a text far shorter than what is
actually here, even given the small page size of the
Singing Horse edition
. 
