Hyperallergic Reviews Maxine Chernoff's Under the Music

At Hyperallergic, Kate Silzer reviews Maxine Chernoff's new book, Under the Music (MadHat Press, 2019). "The work spans four decades and ten books, yet constitutes a surprisingly cohesive collection, especially given the fluidity of narrative modes," writes Silzer. More about Under the Music:

...That Chernoff forgoes established genre categories — oscillating between poetry and prose — only intensifies the dreamscape. She throws routine into relief, foregrounding moments in which “suddenly the mundane appears fearfully beautiful,” and vice versa.

Propelled by crystalline similes — sharp, clear, refracting — the work is disarming, tinged with sly humor or heartbreak, sprouting like a human head from a garden, as occurs in the 1977 piece “A Vegetable Emergency” from a book of the same title. Beneath the absurdity, angst simmers: “I wonder if the head, like a hangnail, is a little-discussed but nevertheless common occurrence.” The narrator’s neighbors are “sympathetic but noncommittal.” The head’s presence in the garden persists like an unspoken shame and, in the end, avoidance is easier than confrontation: The narrator resolves to sell their house and move away, leaving behind that which haunts them, buried in sweet flowers and foliage.

“Quizzing Glass” offers a compact meditation on religion and the culture of mass production and consumption, the “replica of replicas.” In an uncertain world, we look for something to provide solace, and throughout her work, Chernoff shows that the search for meaning comes in many forms, each with its own set of consolations and flaws. “I’ll live like a hermit among the people whose notion is Fate” she writes, “They have no jokes or festivals. Their god is a fish who can hide in clear water.”

Find the full review at Hyperallergic.