Black Ocean

96 pages, $14.95

Review by Jacob Spears

In a world turning increasingly to the virtual, the brief prose poems in Elisa Gabbert’s The Self Unstable read like postcards or dispatches from a new frontier in which the map is just as much a part of reality as the territory. It is a change in form from her debut collection of verse poetry, The French Exit, and because most of the pieces in The Self Unstable are longer than a tweet, at first glance their brevity calls to mind status updates, social media, and the world of our virtual selves. The connotation seems intentional, as many of Gabbert’s entries in the book come up against conversations that social media encourages only the self-obsessed and that what is disguised as insight in a post is so often banal. By weaving witty aphorisms, poetic images, and personal reflections into each entry, Gabbert charts out new territories for conceiving of the self and our relationships to the world, both real and virtual.

Each one embarks on a line of thought, for instance, child rearing: “If you suspect your child is a genius, observe it carefully.” After pointing out high curiosity levels and a sense of humor as baby genius indicators, Gabbert’s satirical joke reaches its punch line:  “Always keep a control child nearby for comparison.”  But the narrator moves away from the joke and follows the contours of that line of thought. “I strongly suspect that I was a control child. My brother convinced me I wanted to be a boy. Or, because of my brother, I wanted to be a boy.” By the end we find ourselves in a new and unfamiliar place we did not expect to be taken, pondering questions of identity. As a result, new ways of thinking emerge in The Self Unstable that are surprising, yet they resonant with sense of familiarity. Continue reading →