Necessary
Stranger by Graham
Foust. Chicago: Flood Editions, 2007.
65
pages, $12.95. ISBN:
0-9787467-1-6.
http://www.floodeditions.com/
Reviewed
by Kristina Marie
Darling
In
his most recent volume of
poems, Necessary Stranger, Graham Foust juxtaposes dark humor with
graveyards,
groceries, and online chat rooms, a combination that proves
striking.
Taking the form of spare, lyrical meditations on American culture, the
book often
explores the role of technology in shaping everyday life, hinting that
such
progress merely fosters a retreat into oneself. Especially
compelling
in
their pairing of dissimilar
types of rhetoric, Foust’s poems convey the sense of escapism
through graceful
shifts in tone and register, dazzling the reader with evocative images
all the
while.
While exploring these themes, the poems in
Necessary Stranger are impressive in their pairing of high diction with
“Number
One Hit Songs,” “Google,” and “Student
Loans.” Often using
mock-melancholy to
depict
various aspects of popular
ephemera, Foust creates fascinating incongruities between form and
content
throughout the book. His poem “Barest Gist”
exemplifies this trend,
combining images conformity with the melodramatic tone of social
alienation. He writes, for example:
…we
believable slaves
blink back.
I move
around
my
many-cornered
heart some.
There are
acres ever through me
flags
refuse. (7)
In
this passage, Foust begins by
presenting the reader with “believable slaves” blinking
back at the day,
ultimately situating the speaker within the category. By
transitioning to
images that suggest the narrator’s uniqueness—of which his
“many-cornered/heart”
is one example—the work parodies the high value placed on
individuality within
American life. Through his juxtaposition of slang words with
more
affected phrases like “There
are acres ever through me,” Foust dramatizes this persistent
belief in uniqueness
within a culture of conformity, hinting at both its irresistibility and
its
absurdity throughout the collection.
The
poems in the collection about
chat rooms and web searches often incorporate these themes, suggesting
that
such new technologies foster both further conformity and a retreat into
the
self. Frequently juxtaposing novel conveniences with age-old
cultural
values, Foust’s interest in the social dynamics created by such
advancements
proves at once compelling and darkly humorous. He writes in a
piece
called “Interstate Eighty,” for instance:
Would
you look at those trucks
of
trucks—they’re only facts. We’ve years
of
brightest cold and fewer roads.
Don’t
yet be amazing. There’s such a
thing
as
sentimental peril, you’ll see. One
needs only
a few songs,
really. There’s no beginning to decay.
(12)
Invoking
“trucks/of trucks” in
addition to the “TV’s thick with burial” and
“music/to be in the movies to”
described earlier in the book, Foust implies that such advancements
often do
little to change longstanding societal ideals. Through such
phrases as “one
needs only a few songs, really,” the poem, like others in the
collection,
suggests that although surface presentation may change, individualism
continues
to exist alongside
conventionality in American culture. “Interstate Eighty,”
like other poems in
the book, pairs astute observations on everyday life with evocative
imagery,
proving “oddly
rockstar” throughout.
Necessary
Stranger is a
compelling read, in which Graham Foust’s capacity for both
lyricism and social
commentary is impressive. Five stars.