A Handmade Museum
By Brenda Coultas
Coffee House
Press
At the beginning of A
Handmade Museum, Coultas mentions that she is “not an archaeologist,
but am a studier of persons and documenter of trails.” She uses this
approach for “The Bowery
Project,” the first part of her book, which finds her detailing
random ephemera on the block, as
well as probing into the arbitrary psyche of passers-by: “Tell me a Bowery
story.”
Early Films,
from 1996, as well as various readings in the NY area, were my first foray
into the mind of Coultas. Her art is in her ability to compose written
pieces that are both
sharp observations as well as playful lines of abstractions. I really
enjoyed hearing her read several years back at the Poetry Project New
Year’s Day marathon. I was in the back room and trying to hear her through
the speakers hooked up to project the reading. Even over the chatter and
snacking I realized the power of Coultas reading her own work. So many
times an author can really present their work in a different light
through voicing it; I am happy to be able to say that I have heard her read
pieces from A Handmade Museum over the years and have enjoyed every
one of them.
The admission that
she is “not a public character…I sleep and toilet in private and think
of public spaces,” aligns well with the voice in the Bowery Project. There
are various moments where the first-person detailed description weaves in
and out of various commentaries on the changes the Bowery has gone through
over the years. Many times she withholds judgment—there are no rants about
the rich moving in and the gentrification on the Lower East Side. Stories
and remembrances about earlier years in L.A. segue into descriptions that
pop up from her NY neighborhood: “then a man growled and flung a suitcase
around in the air (June 12, 2001).” Her apartment, I’d imagine, is cram
packed with items she has found and cannot part with, for the “good
stuff” to her is at the yard sales. At times, she even blends in with
these objects, “I’m naked in camouflage paint as a minor detail in a
mural of Selena…I’m flattened cobblestone you can’t see cuz of the
trompe l’oeil.”
One of the reasons
she keeps objects, and details them, is to make structure. “I put blinders
on but hope that through accumulation they’ll form a pattern out of
chaos.”
But with any accumulation of physical objects, the sheer presence can become
too much. In “Revelation” she has to give up some of her cherished
items; out go some books, a Warhol catalog, etc. “I realized that the
garbage had lost its appeal because I no longer had room…Maybe garbage
would never again be interesting to me. I hoped that I would get my
enthusiasm back, because there is, after all, a shitload in this world.”
There is a parallel
to the Bowery in this statement. In any urban area, the density can
overwhelm, and the individual has to turn to the memories. In “A Summary
of a Public Experiment,” we can see that the true reflection of any public
space (the Bowery here) is in the memory and the retelling. I think it was
Virginia Wolff who started one of her works with a statement similar to
“this is the room as I remember it.” As many of our cities become
corporatized and the history shifts, there needs to be ways to document the
way things used to be, if only as a way to preserve “something”; not
necessarily as a precursor to nostalgia, but just as a way to share with
future generations how we got from there to here.
In “An Early
Alphabet,” which is in the second part, she states, “I learned to write
so I could describe the world/ The birdhouse is empty / Say something
beautiful about it.” She moves to dreams in the third section— "It’s
all in my head: a whole landscape made up, crushed and turned to powder.”
It is this push/pull between the external and internal that makes this book
so good. Even in her earlier writings, Coultas used the concept of films, or
“paper (written?) films” as a format. This style gives plenty of room
for playfulness and beauty, such as in “The Blue Eye: A Paper Film.”
“The film said water. It said salt and it said dirt.” I would love to
see some of Coultas’s paper films on the big screen, but then some of the
uniqueness and magic of her writing could be altered or corrupted in the
process.
One of my very
favorites in the book comes towards the end, “A Short Story That Takes
Place On The Moon.” Here the narrator states, “My cult consists of quilt
makers. It’s the busiest work I could devise. Our cult of quilts is an
Amish extravaganza.
Yo followers
Yo quilters
Yo pushcards
Yo peddlers…
Please join my
astral revolution.”
A Handmade Museum
is truly handmade and original. With her ability to employ many poetic
styles, it is clear why many newer writers are turning to the work of poets
like Coultas and her contemporaries to see the range of possibility in
writing. I hope Coffee House brings out many more of her books in the
future.
Erik Sweet, 2005
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