The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Eels by Sadi RansonMichelle Latiolais
Sadi Ranson. Eels. Salamanca/Alyscamps (35, rue de L’Espérance, 75013 Paris, France), 1997. 92 pp. No price given.
Eels is a slim, elegantly produced book comprising forty-two selected poems and a novella. The volume’s actual physical elegance correlates rather closely to the writing within, and though there’s something decidedly dissolute in this soigné little book, both in the way it’s comprised and in its content, its unfalteringly beautiful writing allows it a seriousness which I think places it at the other extreme from wantonness.
Eels opens with the novella by the same title. Daniel and our narrator Esther, both married to other people, are falling in love, starting an affair. Their relationship to the world is that of lovers: the world and its inhabitants are out there and it goes by. Meanwhile, Daniel and Esther are nature, are smells and sounds and water and squirrels and flowers. “The one cell in my body that retains its primordial mating instinct—that puts its stock, instead—in scent—this part of me, this part of him, made a decision and we recognized each other as ‘potential.’ ”
From the point the affair becomes de facto, the writing rushes thrillingly, and we are swept from office to cafe to study—assignation to assignation—quite as if we too were part of the rarified ocean à deux of lovers, these lovers. The poem “Eels” ends with this image: “But rest now in his arms. / Watch the silver fish and eels / Flashing all around you.”
Eels can be read in a heartbeat, but the erotic power of that heartbeat is remarkable, and though the poems, all coming after the novella, cool us down, they also deepen the experience of the novella, remind us of the abiding power of risks taken with our hearts. No matter those risks always end disastrously, we dine out on the damage forever. [Michelle Latiolais]