Include Everyone, Especially Yourself: The Chrome Chair by Danielle Devereaux

The title of Danielle Deveraux’s book The Chrome Chair comes from a quote the poet heard at the Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society Symposium in 2003:

“We were promised a seat at the table of nations: what we got was a chrome chair” (5).

Most of the poems here describe different reactions to being promised inclusion but given a hollow gesture.

The Chrome Chair divides into two parts: “Splinter” and “Spinster.” Like splinters, the poems in the first half stab; they can shift in the turn of a line between rage and humour, humour and rage. “Diet Tips” opens with the narrator’s observation “Worry pooled in the gut is highly / effective” and ends on “My stomach has / caved in on itself and caught fire / but damn do I look good in blue jeans” (27).

Deveraux’s poems push hard against ways the frank sensuality of the subject is denied to anyone systemically objectified. As “Quelle Affaire” observes:

‘You are what you eat,’ diners are told.
I ate my lover’s wedding ring. Now I’m good as gold. (29)

That’s the whole poem: two lines arranged in a rhyming couplet; three simple statements. The generic opening cliché reinforces the passivity of the next phrase’s vague personlessness. After that lulling set-up though, the shock of the first-person opening to line two lands like a wake-up alarm. The poem ends on another cliché, but it has been transformed, puckishly recast by the I, for the I. The object of the married lover’s lust claims subjectivity despite all the cultural pigeonholing reserved for the third angle of this brand of relational triangle.

Though Deveraux’s poems connect like a chain of paper dolls, rather than flat shapes, the poet’s skill expresses each one’s unique internal ecology. For example, the extended exploration of female socialization in “Playthings” (which asks of Barbie and the children who play with her: “So what if your mother’s a German / porn doll”?[36]), leads to a short, sharp feminist rim-shot in “Double Dactyl” with its nursery rhyme opening “Inkity-pinkity / Virginia Woolf…” (38). That is followed by the realization that, for “Feminists in Heaven,” there’s

                  …Not much for the Famous Five to do here but form
a curling team and hurry, hurry hard to glory. There’s a rink to beat
at the Brier. (39)

“Feminists in Heaven” leads to a moment of eco-feminist critique in “Academic Article: ‘The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought’ (S. Bordo, 1989),” (40) which in turn leads to an excoriating exploration of animal rights in “We [Heart] the Animals,” (41) a retelling of the unnatural life and brutal death of Travis the chimp. And so the poems guide readers through a line of linked yet independent topics.

In “Spinster,” the book’s second section, the rage/humour polarity is less stabby and more bludgeony. The section reimagines the life of Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring” (1962) which is credited with starting the contemporary ecological movement. The first poem here, “How to be a Spinster, circa 1910,” recommends strategies for eating alone in public: “Do not order cappuccino. / Froth makes you look // available…” it begins, and then moves to advise “you” to repress the way your tongue wants “to slide along the smooth, hard / edge of a belt buckle (47). Similarly, “An Intern Catches Up on Admin,” the last poem in the section and the book, shimmies between appropriateness and whimsey. An imagined response to a fan letter, it claims that Carson “sleeps in a claw-foot tub, slim legs / turning to tail” (71). If the reader is lucky, they might hear Carson “talk dirty: / heptachlor, dieldrin, DDT” (71) – cancer-causing insecticides, the use of which Carson was the first to decry.

A third of the poems in this second section are imagined letters between Carson and members of her family – biological and chosen. Among these is a three poem “How to Clean Everything” sequence: “C” (for conscience), “M” (for marriage), “S” (for soul). The rest of the poems are individual explorations in response to various “what ifs” around Carson’s life, like what if it had been legal to express her sexuality?

 Now Rachel, do stop biting your lip. 

But Miss Skinker, if I did, how would I keep 
from biting yours?” (51).

What if Carson’s ghost haunts David Suzuki?

the hotel sheets lie crisp and white. When
 he falls asleep she slips in beside. The touch 
of her cool hand on the flat of his stomach 
does not wake him” (67).

What if Carson came for tea with Devereaux? She’d clean and bake and

                                                                    … want to say 
 I love the photo of you in a ball-cap and short shorts, shin- 

deep in sea. I want to say you have beautiful 
legs. But this switch from the longed-for has thrown me 
like a sculpin from salt water -- Miss Carson, more tea?” (68).

Danielle Deveraux’s The Chrome Chair demonstrates the worth of taking it slow in poetry, despite constant pressure on authors to publish early and often. A number of pieces here were previously collected in the limited-edition chapbook “Cardiogram” (Baseline Press 2011), and the title poem was included in Best Canadian Poems in English 2011. The result of waiting is a book of strong individual poems that also work together in the best imaginative manner. And so I say “Why yes, Ms. Deveraux. More, please.”

Danielle Devereaux grew up in St. John’s, Newfoundland where she lives now with her partner, their two children and two cats. Her poetry has appeared in Riddle Fence, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Newfoundland Quarterly and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011. Her chapbook, Cardiogram, was published in 2011 by Baseline Press. “Quelle Affaire,” a poem from the chapbook, was made into a short film by director Ruth Lawrence. An earlier draft of The Chrome Chair was shortlisted for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. Danielle is an alumnus of the Banff Centre for the Arts Writing Studio, holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Women’s Studies from Memorial University, and has done doctoral work in Communications Studies at Concordia University. She has worked as a freelance writer and editor, and currently works in communications at Memorial University’s School of Social Work.

Publisher: Riddle Fence Publishing (April 30, 2024)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 80 pages
ISBN: 9781738151509

Kathy Mac

Kathy Mac (she/her) has published three books of poetry (Roseway Publishing), two books on the craft of writing (Wording Around Press), and, as Dr. Kathleen McConnell, a book of essays (Wolsak and Wynn Publishers). Her work has been a finalist for several national and regional awards (eg. the GG for Poetry, the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize), and even won some (eg. The Gerald Lampert Award).

Mac lives in Nme’kaqnuk (Sambro Head) near Halifax in the unceded traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy peoples.