Patriotka

To say that Darek Foks’s The She-Patriot is a collection of love poems seems both misleading and absolutely true: they are blunt, even vulgar in their eroticism, but still each and every time just undoubtedly pretty. Why, then, is it both misleading and true? Because as usual with Foks, to figure out what the author is really, actually talking about – through a series of tropes, allegories and mediations – is the main challenge in front of the reader. It cannot be avoided or postponed, but at the same time it offers, as a reward, plenty of readerly satisfaction and much, much more. The stakes are undoubtedly high, as the actual subject turns out to be (as is often the case with Foks) a certain set of issues and problems linked to contemporary discourses of collective historical memory and collective identities. Specific techniques, concepts and narrative devices employed by Foks all contribute to this overarching commentary. The male protagonist, for instance, is consistently portrayed as confident, even overconfident, and possessive; he’s always performing a certain type of avarice, using cultural conventions both high- and lowbrow. His behaviour and gestures, however, are supposed to tell us something not about the situation as such, but about their ultimate roots. In this context it seems significant that the fundamental technique employed by Foks in The She-Patriot is a reversal, understood in a variety of ways: the poems in the book are often symmetrical or bracketed, contain their own mirror images, or unexpectedly turn any given scenario around.

Foks’s new book might ultimately touch on the issues of history, collectivity and convention; however, it is also – and crucially – precisely what it seems to be at first glance: a collection of exceptionally well-written, formally precise, and yes, sometimes vulgar love poems.