Review of Double Self-Portrait by James Lindsay // Margaryta Golovchenko
I’m struggling to impose a single neat narrative onto James Lindsay’s new collection, Double Self-Portrait, a fitting dilemma considering the expansive territory covered by Lindsay’s poems. Although—as the title fittingly suggests—ekphrasis has a prominent role in DoubleSelf-Portrait, discussions of parenthood and bees, self-reflections on writing, and tongue-in-cheek criticism of contemporary culture populate the pages of the collection as rhythmically as Yayoi Kusama’s dots (which so fascinate Lindsay). Reading Double Self-Portrait reaffirms my thought that it can sometimes be easier to distance ourselves and think of our existences as running parallel to that which perplexes us. Lindsay’s poems mitigate this instinctive reaction, not by merely celebrating the bizarreness that surrounds us, but by crafting a sharper vision of life that encourages us to let go of ourselves a bit, to think critically without taking ourselves too seriously.
In Double Self-Portrait, we find a world that is alive in a way that differs from the Romantic idea of a nature teeming with overlooked marvels and captivating intricacies. For Lindsay, it is a nature buzzing with eccentricities, desires, and weaknesses that reflect some of the qualities of us humans, the bizarre creatures inhabiting said world. So if like me, you never paid attention to “the lake’s glass eczema” (“Ooooos and Woooos”), thought of “the day / like dolphins during coitus” (“Hissing of Summer Lawns”), or simply never stopped to enjoy “the cursive of rustling leaves” (“A Home Can’tBe Abandoned If It Was Never Lived In”), Lindsay’s poems are sure to open your eyes to the beautiful bizarreness that surrounds us. All we have to do is let go of ourselves a little and let our mind simultaneously wander and sharpen to what it’s experiencing.
The collection is structured as four “thematic” sections filled with shorter poems that showcase Lindsay’s wordplay and poetic gymnastics in carefully assembled snapshots of moments that bring to mind the phrase “organized chaos.” Lindsay does not airbrush anything, allowing readers to immerse themselves in lines like the palpably timely ending of “The Gap”:
Make it great
again, says a tedious weirdo adrift
in the woods and too stubborn
to admit they weren’t here first.
In fact, wit is a key ingredient in Double Self-Portrait which Lindsay uses precisely, never overstepping the boundary even in his darkest and most astute moments, as in the shorter version of “DoubleSelf-Portrait,” in which the subjects of Jeff Wall’s photograph“awaken[…] later that afternoon / as brothers-fathers to one another, / both in incest and attendance.” Lindsay’s humour belies truths that are difficult to discuss otherwise. His poems bring readers into familiar spaces and situations while always keeping them tethered, as if to say that we are not alone, that laughter is our escape route by which we can climb back out to comforting safety.
This sense of a relationship between the reader and Lindsay is especially palpable in the four sections “Repro Ditto,” “Quotes,” “Honne and Tatemae,” and “Double Self-Portrait.” Of the eight sections that make up DoubleSelf-Portrait, these four are individual long poems that, rather than branching off from a single image or thought, are like a dance of wordplay, in which Lindsay ruminates on the process of writing and the role of poetry. Interspliced between the four shorter sections—“Failed Questions,” “Decorative Knots,”“Ekphrasis! Ekphrasis!” and “The Disagreement Between Dawn and Dusk”—the four long poems tease the relationship between act and intermission, inviting the reader to consider whether it is the four longer poems or the four shorter sections that are the so-called “main event.” A difference in length is not the only thing that distinguishes “Repro Ditto,” “Quotes,” “Honne and Tatemae,” and“Double Self-Portrait” from the rest of the collection. These four long poems also have a distinctly autobiographic tone to them as Lindsay frequently breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the reader, telling them:
by the time you read this poem my first
child will be born and I know they will mesmerize me, and, made
out of Nicole and I, will double us, continue us in a way our dog
could not.
It is here that the collection’s mediation of the self is most prevalent, as well as where the poet’s hand is felt most acutely, similar to the trompe l’oeil technique in painting, where you know the trick but are no less captivated by the result in front of you.
Double Self-Portrait resembles a cabinet of curiosities, yet Lindsay’s poems are propelled by something far greater than the mere curiosity in the surrounding world. Dualism, one of the central themes in Double Self-Portrait, extends beyond the subject matter and imagery to Lindsay’s stylistic approach, from the back and forth between the longer and shorter sections, the personal and the collective. In returning to the idea of truth, authenticity, and the self, Lindsay’s collection does not seek to find a single definitive embodiment for each of these concepts so much as it seeks to constantly question and poke fun at our inability to let loose and see the modern world for all the comedic tragedy it has to offer.
