Civil Service

Claire Schwartz’s debut collection, Civil Service, is crafted as an examination, a collaboration between the text and the reader. The opening section, “[the original gesture],” follows the evolution of a single vertical line to the diagram of a milk carton, and ttext below each shape strikes as similarly physical, material. Reading Schwartz’s lines feels akin to turning each in my hands, trying to feel out what is “[t]he house, the host, the cell, the hormones, the history./ The geography, the poem, the meaning you make.”

The blur between holding, possessing, and responsibility, accountability to and for others, is introduced in the figure of the fugitive Amira: “She is in your hands now.” Schwartz then traces intricate webs between a cast of characters who are all implicated in the interrogation and torture of Amira: the Old Dictator, the New Dictator, the townspeople, the Archivist, the Curator, the Censor, the Stenographer, the Board Chair, the Intern. Each is defined by their role within various overlapping institutions, institutions they ultimately comprise, and revised by their relation to Amira, and the off-page violences inflicted upon her.

Schwartz’s Acknowledgements end by thanking the reader: “You revised this text.” This collection is a text that revises me in each re-reading. If you allow it, these poems will revise you too.