Book Review: The Book of Rooms (Kobus Moolman)Reviewed by Jim FerrisOne of the risks of narrative poetry is that plot — the whodunit, the and then what — will bring the illusion of order and inevitability and come to overwhelm much of what makes poetry distinctive or at least different than prose: the joy of sinking your teeth into language, the jumpy associations of consciousness, the oddness of the line (why does the line end there? who talks that way?), the sneaky essence of feeling without which poetry is sunk. Kobus Moolman's sixth book of poems, A Book of Rooms (Deep South, 2014), is clearly a narrative. It describes the arc of the life of a South African man born "with a hole in his heart" and impaired legs. But this is far from a traditional narrative, and it succeeds not only as story but also as poetry. The South African poet and playwright has won many literary awards, including the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award, the South African Literary Award for Poetry from the country's Ministry of Arts & Culture, and multiple awards from the Performing Arts Network of South Africa. He teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. A Book of Rooms marks a departure from the shorter lines and the bouncing images he has used in the past. The poems are almost entirely made of couplets in which lines alternate between a long, margin-to-margin line followed by a much shorter line of three or four words. The effect is remarkable, supple and flowing yet forever off-balance, which resonates well with the central character and his experience of a shifty, murky and often disappointing world. The never-named character's impairments play a major role in the story, which is told from a third-person point of view that has clear access to his thoughts and, especially, his feelings. The narrative particularly advances through his affect, which is crucial to the book avoiding the risks of narrative. The first poem in the book, "The Room of Maybe," describes his room when he was a child:
There is absolutely nothing he can do The poems have a pronounced recursive quality as well. Not only do phrases and images reappear across the book , but within the poems periods are not used. New sentences and new ideas are expressed with spaces and capital letters, which enhances the flowing quality of the lines, even with the stops and starts that are common to human thought.
The tin holds The book is structured in four sections: "Who," "What," "Why," and "When," with each section is made up of a sequence of poems focusing on a particular room: "The Room of Impressions and First Appearances," "The Room of Promises," "The Room of Going Nowhere." The rooms are more psychic than physical, but the physicality of these poems is ever present: the body of the central character and the bodies of those close to him are never far away, from when he peeks through a keyhole at his sister in the bath to the punishment he avoids
because he has a hole in his heart, as One of the real strengths of A Book of Rooms is how deeply it explores a life contextualized by congenital impairments. Disability was surely not the only factor shaping his life. But it clearly was an important factor. I wonder how the central character's life might have been different had he discovered common cause with other disabled people. I wonder as well about other power dynamics not explicitly addressed. The character must have lived for some time under South Africa's apartheid, but race does nor recognizably play a role in the narrative. Recognizably for me, I should say. As I write this, another unarmed African-American man has been killed by police, this time in Madison, a city I know well. As the United States lurches through its ongoing crisis, I found myself wanting more about this crucial part of South Africa's past and present and how it may have affected individual people. This may well not be a fair demand to make of Moolman and his book; he clearly did not set out to encompass the scope of South African life since the mid-twentieth century, but rather to focus on the affective life of one person. And it is no doubt true that people who live through great historical moments are mostly focused on the mundane, the day-to-dayness of their lives, as each of us likely is right now. Intense focus on individual life can be powerful, moving, and enriching, as it is here. But lives are not lived outside of context, apart from the larger forces that structure our available choices and shape our attention. As rewarding as A Book of Rooms is, I find myself wanting that larger view too.
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