Zirconia

Zirconia, according to Wikipedia, is a "diamond simulant". A fake diamond. Chelsey Minnis's book ZIRCONIA takes the reader through the life of someone who doesn't seem fully emotionally connected to her life events. I first really realized this in the poem "Sternum", where the speaker talks about "simulated vulnerability", hence the book's title about simulation. The title and the previous poems really started to have meaning to me after reading "Sternum". The speaker sort of envies people who are able to have real vulnerability and bravery. She goes on to talk about her admiration for the "frayed" edges of the sternum, hinting at finding beauty in the unrefined structure that reminds me, as the reader, of the speaker finding optimism out of her flawed past. This theme of "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" is repeated in another favorite poem of mine from ZIRCONIA, "The Torturers". She "grew to admire the limes and lemons. They were more beautiful to [her] than the [car her boss drove]". The limes and lemons, along with callouses that represent (to me) the reader developing a thick skin show a more positive outlook, taking the bad and making good out of it. In "Electonique", the speaker is so unused to being happy that she thinks that she is manic! And the fact that she seems to be relating it to electronic graphic simulators makes me think that she doesn't believe that her happiness is real and that it is an illusion.

ZIRCONIA, whether it is about one woman or many, discusses a lot of serious topics. There is a lot of obvious discomfort around men, which we learn in "Promise" could be from the speaker's mother's rape. In "Uh", the speaker says she "just want[s] to pluck the grey beards of old men and give them hairline fractures." In "Speech About the Moon", there are much similar themes, with subtle references to conception (the "moon" being the egg, and birds, ocean and swordfish being sperm). The speaker seems to feel violated here: "late at night...a placid seamonster...is rising out of the sea...with kelp on its head...to look at me." She mentions disgust with grey hair again. The three poems mentioned above seem to all be about the same thing, "Promises" possibly from the point of view from the daughter that resulted from the rape. The most important part of these three poems, to me, was in "Promises" where she describes overcoming and dominating her fear that stems from her/her mother's rape.

While Minnis writes a serious book of poetry, there are several points of comic relief and pun. Minnis does a great job of play-on-words, and carefully inserted phrases or words that lead the reader to imagine different things that aren't ACTUALLY what the author means, but what she wants us to think of. We talked about in class how people tend to fill in the blanks while reading, and Minnsi takes advantage of this fact. The poem "Tiger" has word play at every turn, using words such as "thrust", "4-6 inches across", "sprung traps" and "throat", each in a strategic place where the reader will jump to the intended, although wrong conclusion about what Minnis is writing about. The word "oral" is recurring throughout ZIRCONIA as well...cleaver. Good one Chelsey...making perverts out of us all.

One of the most unique things about Minnis' ZIRCONIA is her use of "dot dot dot's" or ........
This is extremely effective for the fill-in-the-blank strategy I talked about above, as well as gives the reader a breather to take in each segment of writing. I began to think of these poems as her though process. Each ..... to me symbolized cluttered thought, and each meaningful thought was written down. The prose poems seemed to be the more carefully thought-out stories. "The Torturers" is an example of this. Each thought is more thought-out in the prose poems, and they seem more edited. I think the mix of the various styles is important, and I really like that the prose makes the speaker seem more thoughtful and refined while the .... style seems unedited and genuine.

I loved reading ZIRCONIA! The new style was so interesting to read, but it was balanced so nicely with the occasional prose and diagram. The subject matter was presented in a way that really endeared me to the speaker, and I was immediately attached to her and felt empathy. Maybe it's because the speaker(s) was(were) women, or maybe it was because the thoughts were presented in every-day terms, talking about lilies, sternum, and the ocean. Whatever the reason, I found this book to be extremely effective and impactive.