BOOKS
A, Z, AND THE WORDS IN-BETWEEN
AN UNASSUMING BOOK THAT BURNS BRIGHT ON THE THORNY PATH OF CREATION AND SUCCESS, DEBRA WEINSTEIN’S APPRENTICE TO THE FLOWER POET Z BARES A LOT ON THE COLLECTIVE SOUL OF THE WESTERN LITERARY SCENE. THOUGH YEARS PAST ITS PREMIERE, ELISE MONTINOLA STILL THINKS IT PERTINENT TO WRITE IT A LOVE ESSAY. Making its rounds in book sale bins everywhere, Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z is a footnote novel in terms of its plot skeleton, being yet another hyperrealist account of a wide-eyed girl trying to get by in the big city. It should not, however, be easily dismissed based on this fact, but instead wholly considered for its rough-around-the-edges charm, its brute undertones, and the sinewy narrative voice on which these two things rest. Looking deeper into its content, it is, essentially, fiction about poetry, about the impenetrably complicated poetic process and the cut-throat world of the poetry elite, laughably akin to the world of the fashion elite – a more intimate and Etsy-fied The Devil Wears Prada, if you will. The aforesaid voice is Annabelle’s, creative writing major and lower 99% occupier, whose words chronicle her descent into the world she fell feet-first in love with, in search of answers to the perennial what is poetry question, and en route in her journey to interning for the famed and decorated Flower Poet . Annabelle proves to be a good looking glass into this world as a vessel both verbose and empty; at 20 and on a scholarship to Columbia from a Long Island community college, she is barely half a person, only certain of her affinity for words. But this, for the time being, seems to be enough to breathe life into the little she has and to fuel her ambition to succeed, to stand out from a sea of sharks, but first, to impress Z at any cost. Upon and throughout contact, she maintains a strange dynamic with Z, who is, at best, an ambivalent aunt to her, one that
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/August 2012
may have the propensity to overstep her boundaries during frequent bouts of figurative drunkenness. Poetry, ironically, seems to have hardened and mechanized Z, who, in the novel’s present, views all forms of life through a utilitarian lens, wary of all those gunning to usurp her throne. She overworks Annabelle to the grind, and whatever meat left on A’s bones is passed on to the rest of Z’s prodigy family whose side endeavors need cataloguing. But despite all this, Annabelle clings to the Flower Poet, whose title comes from her most potent figure of speech, even with the presence of a small cast of characters that remains close by. There is her true mentor, Arthur Feld, her old poetry professor who encouraged her to venture into the big world of Columbia and whose negligible literary status, warmth and praise of her make him the sweet, dependent loser-father she never had. There is also in-vogue experiment poet, Braun Brown, whose graduate class Annabelle audits and who advises her to beware the Flower Poet. And there is co-tryster and grad student Harry Banks, who, similar to her, is an assistant to a famous novelist and so suffers from the same abuses, although his manifests in his obsession over literally pressing his James Joyce-Nora fetish onto her in order to impel him to write. Annabelle bears all this unwaveringly as a true passive– masochist, letting people happen to her, perhaps to add more and more bricks to her experience so she can write herself endlessly. In this way, it becomes clear that she glosses over her life and hides behind her words to brave her truest intentions, producing beautiful and