Creed, Carolyn J

English

Scholars Commons

The Goose
Volume 15 | No. 1 Article 21
8-27-2016
Marry & Burn by Rachel Rose
Carolyn J. Creed
University College of the North
Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America
Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment Commons
Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:
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Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante
de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez
scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Creed, Carolyn J.. "Marry & Burn by Rachel Rose." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 21, 2016,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/21.
Bee-Kissed Koans 
 
Marry & Burn by RACHEL ROSE 
Harbour, 2015 $18.95 
 
Reviewed by CAROLYN CREED 
  
 The sweeping scale of the opening 
prose poem in Rachel Rose’s collection 
promises large-issue focus, but this first 
piece, “Anthropology,” simply throws up 
the largest possible canvas to make initial 
broad strokes. Mainly, the poems in three 
sections, “Vows,” “Legends,” and 
“Addictions,” zero in on intimate specifics 
that cause Rose’s reader titillation and 
unease at once. In keeping with the title 
paraphrase, Marry and Burn exposes the 
advice from St. Paul, to tie the knot to avoid 
the scorching heat of passion; “Marry or 
burn,” then upends the advice to say that 
no matter what marital state we find 
ourselves in, we shall burn. In the 
declaredly “cisgender” presence of her 
speaker (“Growing Pains” 2), Rose’s volume 
entices us to join her in the rewards and 
punishments of multiply-erring human 
pursuits. 
 Somewhere among the twisty vows 
undertaken by the lovers with gender 
identities as mercurial as their lovemaking, 
Rose makes her persona’s core of yearning 
available to us: the suffering insinuates 
itself into the reader’s consciousness, as 
intensely as if such a reader herself were to 
experience, as in the Sapphic piece, “Flood,” 
a surfeit of desire: “Once I passed beneath /  
your brazen linens’ pomegranate stain, / on 
my way to the fountain” (25-27). Both the 
ages-old virginity test, of blood on bridal 
sheets, and the rich appearance of the 
pomegranate’s juices impart sensuality to 
the image; the fountain reached thereafter 
uses a wet “Spring” as both source and 
season, ending with “You were so stone / I 
flooded” (34-35).  
      In the poem, “Honey,” an erotic 
dipping of body into thick sweet liquid stirs 
a reader’s most aroused response, though 
the cleaning-off of all that honey brings the 
image back to sheer practicality.  Equally 
pervasive to the theme of lovers’ 
triumphant coupling and subsequent woe, 
as “Honey” suggests, is the motif of the bee. 
Though a broad picture is created by the 
current ailing of hives—“The only universal 
was bees. Bees and love. Honey and sting” 
ends “Anthropology”—Rose brings the 
question of bee health to her own back yard 
in later sections of the book, and the effect 
is to locate human guilt in the gut of the 
beekeeper herself. There cannot be a 
clearer message than rueful admission of 
bee murder: having failed to host a hive 
through all seasons, the speaker asks the 
farmer painfully, “Can we try again?”  (38). 
The query hangs unanswered at the end of 
“Bees,” summoning the plight of the dead 
bees as well as of their inadequate though 
well-meaning keeper.  
      The constant coupling of pleasure 
and pain takes Rose’s poems in “Vows” 
through layers of breathtaking imagery—
first through sheer loveliness, and next 
(before the breath is fully taken) through 
discomfort phasing to horror. The section’s 
closing poem, “Tooth,” demonstrates the 
joining together of these:  
 
 The need grew in me   
 the way yeast grows bread   
 the way a scream grows the chest  
 the way a baby grows the passage. 
 (20-23)  
 
Ultimately, as the first and last lines of 
“Tooth” indicate, the need for love 
roughens the lover-to-be: “Blown I came in 
1
Creed: Marry & Burn by Rachel Rose
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016
roughened by love / and you met me with 
your mouth” (59-60). 
      In subsequent sections of the 
collection, a darker cast colours the pieces, 
as if building legends and succumbing to 
addictions were two sides to the same 
fraught tale. A sustained reference to 
mother and father figures in “Legends” 
gives the mythmaking a personal feel, and 
yet the generational elements come across 
as timeless. A daughterly query in 
“Sunflowers”—“Mother, where did you 
go?”(16)—leads organically to a motherly 
observation in “The Introduction” that, 
unlike the sons’ pensive silence after a “play 
about evil” depicting the Nazis, the 
daughter bursts into a fierce declaration 
that she could somehow have outrun the 
perpetrators of the Holocaust, “exploding a 
rainstorm of tears” (25). What Rose calls 
“brutal vulnerability” (“Serious” 13) is 
evident in all the legend-making poems. 
      We might expect the “Addictions” 
section to carry the bleakest message, yet 
touches of humour that lift harsh 
explorations of love in earlier poems 
reassert their presence here. “The Test,” 
which poses multiple-choice questions to 
ascertain “whether you were your addiction 
/ or your addiction simply tested you” (26-
27), ends in the binary opposition, “Behind 
one door was the rest of your life, behind 
the other / your death and there was no 
third door” (29-30).  The blinkered thinking 
of such testers strikes the reader as wryly 
funny in its reductionist approach to the 
complexities of addiction—funny because 
too often true. 
      The horses that grace the 
collection’s cover in stained-glass hues 
appear in its closing poem: “Unbridle, 
unsaddle / the dappled horse in your 
barefooted fable” (“Feast” 9-10): fittingly 
mythic beasts.  
 
 CAROLYN CREED teaches university English 
courses in Northern Manitoba to support 
her poetry-writing habit.
 
    
2
The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 21
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/21


Marry & Burn by Rachel Rose

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 15 | No. 1 Article 218-27-2016Marry & Burn by Rachel RoseCarolyn J. CreedUniversity College of the NorthPart of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North AmericaCommons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeCreed, Carolyn J.. "Marry & Burn by Rachel Rose." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 21, 2016,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/21.Bee-Kissed Koans  Marry & Burn by RACHEL ROSE Harbour, 2015 $18.95  Reviewed by CAROLYN CREED    The sweeping scale of the opening prose poem in Rachel Rose’s collection promises large-issue focus, but this first piece, “Anthropology,” simply throws up the largest possible canvas to make initial broad strokes. Mainly, the poems in three sections, “Vows,” “Legends,” and “Addictions,” zero in on intimate specifics that cause Rose’s reader titillation and unease at once. In keeping with the title paraphrase, Marry and Burn exposes the advice from St. Paul, to tie the knot to avoid the scorching heat of passion; “Marry or burn,” then upends the advice to say that no matter what marital state we find ourselves in, we shall burn. In the declaredly “cisgender” presence of her speaker (“Growing Pains” 2), Rose’s volume entices us to join her in the rewards and punishments of multiply-erring human pursuits.  Somewhere among the twisty vows undertaken by the lovers with gender identities as mercurial as their lovemaking, Rose makes her persona’s core of yearning available to us: the suffering insinuates itself into the reader’s consciousness, as intensely as if such a reader herself were to experience, as in the Sapphic piece, “Flood,” a surfeit of desire: “Once I passed beneath /  your brazen linens’ pomegranate stain, / on my way to the fountain” (25-27). Both the ages-old virginity test, of blood on bridal sheets, and the rich appearance of the pomegranate’s juices impart sensuality to the image; the fountain reached thereafter uses a wet “Spring” as both source and season, ending with “You were so stone / I flooded” (34-35).        In the poem, “Honey,” an erotic dipping of body into thick sweet liquid stirs a reader’s most aroused response, though the cleaning-off of all that honey brings the image back to sheer practicality.  Equally pervasive to the theme of lovers’ triumphant coupling and subsequent woe, as “Honey” suggests, is the motif of the bee. Though a broad picture is created by the current ailing of hives—“The only universal was bees. Bees and love. Honey and sting” ends “Anthropology”—Rose brings the question of bee health to her own back yard in later sections of the book, and the effect is to locate human guilt in the gut of the beekeeper herself. There cannot be a clearer message than rueful admission of bee murder: having failed to host a hive through all seasons, the speaker asks the farmer painfully, “Can we try again?”  (38). The query hangs unanswered at the end of “Bees,” summoning the plight of the dead bees as well as of their inadequate though well-meaning keeper.        The constant coupling of pleasure and pain takes Rose’s poems in “Vows” through layers of breathtaking imagery—first through sheer loveliness, and next (before the breath is fully taken) through discomfort phasing to horror. The section’s closing poem, “Tooth,” demonstrates the joining together of these:    The need grew in me    the way yeast grows bread    the way a scream grows the chest   the way a baby grows the passage.  (20-23)   Ultimately, as the first and last lines of “Tooth” indicate, the need for love roughens the lover-to-be: “Blown I came in 1Creed: Marry & Burn by Rachel RosePublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016roughened by love / and you met me with your mouth” (59-60).       In subsequent sections of the collection, a darker cast colours the pieces, as if building legends and succumbing to addictions were two sides to the same fraught tale. A sustained reference to mother and father figures in “Legends” gives the mythmaking a personal feel, and yet the generational elements come across as timeless. A daughterly query in “Sunflowers”—“Mother, where did you go?”(16)—leads organically to a motherly observation in “The Introduction” that, unlike the sons’ pensive silence after a “play about evil” depicting the Nazis, the daughter bursts into a fierce declaration that she could somehow have outrun the perpetrators of the Holocaust, “exploding a rainstorm of tears” (25). What Rose calls “brutal vulnerability” (“Serious” 13) is evident in all the legend-making poems.       We might expect the “Addictions” section to carry the bleakest message, yet touches of humour that lift harsh explorations of love in earlier poems reassert their presence here. “The Test,” which poses multiple-choice questions to ascertain “whether you were your addiction / or your addiction simply tested you” (26-27), ends in the binary opposition, “Behind one door was the rest of your life, behind the other / your death and there was no third door” (29-30).  The blinkered thinking of such testers strikes the reader as wryly funny in its reductionist approach to the complexities of addiction—funny because too often true.       The horses that grace the collection’s cover in stained-glass hues appear in its closing poem: “Unbridle, unsaddle / the dappled horse in your barefooted fable” (“Feast” 9-10): fittingly mythic beasts.    CAROLYN CREED teaches university English courses in Northern Manitoba to support her poetry-writing habit.     2The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 21https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/21

https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1266&amp;context=thegoose

Marry & Burn by Rachel Rose

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