Bellocq's Ophelia : Poems

Rating:
Summary: A complete novel told in a series of verses
Review: Bellocq's Ophelia by Natasha Trethewey is a complete novel told in a series of verses inspired by the early 1900 E. J. Bellocq photographs of prostitutes in the red-light district of new Orleans. Bellocq's Ophelia is the imaginative and original tale of a woman who's brothel Madame tells her to act like statue on display for the male patrons of the establishment. Bellocq - April 1911: There comes a quiet man now to my room--/Papa Bellocq, his camera on his back./He wants nothing, he says, but to take me/as I would arrange myself, fully clothed--/a brooch at my throat, my white hat angled/just so--or not, the smooth map of my flesh/awash in afternoon light. In my rom/everything's a prop for his composition--/brass spittoon in the corner, the silver/mirror, brush and comb of my toilette./I try to pose as I think he would like--shy/at first, then bolder. I'm not so foolish/that I don't know this photograph we make/will bear the stamp of his name, not mine.

Rating:
Summary: Rare is the book that is too short.
Review: Natasha Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia (Graywolf Press, 2002)

A very slim volume, this, running under forty pages; it's more of a chapbook than a book, or would be had not Graywolf poured a professional amount of money into its publication. Whether the work deserved it or not is, of course, subject to argument (as it is with all books of poetry); but I get the feeling that even the most hardcore reader and collector of poetry is going to have a hard time shelling out the average price of a book of poetry-- already far greater, in terms of pennies per page, than it is for a novel or a piece of nonfiction-- for a book about half the size of an average single-author collection.

The poems themselves are interesting, and make for quite good reading overall. Trethewey, inspired by E. J. Bellocq's photographs of a Louisiana prostitute, imagines herself from the girl's perspective, first in a series of letters to an old friend at home, then in the girl's diary. If Trethewey's mission here was to show that Ophelia was an individual, a human being, rather than just a prostitute or just a photographic subject, she succeeded nicely; phelia's voice is a strong one, and will stay with the reader after the book is finished. I just wish there had been more of that voice. ***