Lucas de Lima's Wet Land Reviewed at HTMLGiant

The thorny terrain of the elegy is brought to focus in Marty Cain's review of Lucas de Lima's Wet Land (Action Books, 2014) at HTMLGiant. To set the stage, Cain reminds us that "The premise of Wet Land is almost impossibly weird: it’s a book-length response to the death of Lucas de Lima’s close friend Ana Maria, who was killed by an alligator. Written mostly in all-caps, the poems are delivered by a narrator who frequently takes the form of a bird, ruminating on Ana Maria, the gator, and the act of writing itself." Cain reminds us of the troubling line the elegy must tow, between paying tribute to the dead and dazzling the reader with poetic skills. An obvious analog here, Cain points out, is Milton's "Lycidas." More:

The National Geographic documentary turns Ana Maria’s death into entertainment, because as horrific as Ana Maria’s death is, it’s engaging. Similarly, her unusual death is part of what makes this collection unique—it gives it a hook. After all, the strangeness of Wet Land’s premise is what attracted me to the book in the first place. But ultimately, Wet Land isn’t really about the death of Ana Maria; rather, it’s about the anxiety of representing her death. In effect, de Lima creates a kind of anti-elegy, an interrogation of the mode’s exploitative and self-serving properties. As such, the text is hugely self-referential. At one point, the poetic voice is disrupted by a shift into a four-page transcript of an arts committee discussing whether de Lima should receive a grant for Wet Land. The committee members criticize the manuscript, touching on many of the problems of representing tragedy:

It seems melodramatic. And it seems to me that the violence of the subject matter—he’s already noted how corporate media has made a spectacle out of it—it seems to me that he’s not doing justice to his friend.

At this strange and climactic moment, the creative process blurs into the work itself. Juxtaposed with de Lima’s poems are excerpts from what appear to be Ana Maria’s emails, and many of these fragments also serve to reinforce the narrator’s anxieties. For example, Ana Maria laments that her writing is merely “A BOOK ABOUT MYSELF, WHICH YOU MAY PREFER TO PUT BACK ON THE SHELF,” resonating with the problem of self-aggrandizement in elegies. Even the choice to write the book in all-caps is reflective of the collection’s preoccupations with mimetic anxiety—depending on one’s interpretation, the uppercase letters could be indicative of poetic catharsis, or of pure melodrama, or (most likely) both. As the book progresses, the scope broadens. De Lima becomes increasingly concerned with the horror of AIDS, alluding to works by the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz. Thus, the focus shifts from an individual death to a collective tragedy. At times, it’s difficult to connect these threads, but that also may be the point—Wet Land is heavily concerned with death’s overarching presence, its ability to demolish borders and defy logic.

Continue on to HTMLGiant to read the rest of the review.