L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems

Poet and essayist Gabbert (The Self Unstable) bases her pleasantly unconventional second collection upon the imagined life of Judy, a character from Wallace Shawn’s The Designated Mourner, a play about a marriage disintegrating amid political turmoil. Writing from Judy’s perspective, Gabbert dissects the past and extracts aphoristic certainties, looming questions, and humorous meditations on a world that is both mystifying and banal. The poems written about Judy’s ex-husband, Jack, form the collection’s heart, with most being shamelessly wry, (“I’m not in love with Jack.// I have a crush on Jack.// Jack is my husband, who left me”), succinct, and witty (“Have I wifed Jack/ or is Jack wifing me?”). Gabbert also frequently confronts corporeality and superstition, the latter of which, for Judy, emanates—alongside a political paranoia—from a desire to find meaning in the utterly meaningless. (“There are messages// in some trash and bits of twig/ on the step, the pigeons/ who are always together—// three of them, a conspiracy.”) Judy’s corporeal preoccupation lies in anxieties over aging, sex, and self-alienation (“I don’t fantasize about sex,// just kissing him. Somehow,/ I don’t embody me. I watch it/ in the third person”). Gabbert’s meticulous and sardonic character study feels familiar and organic without straying from Shawn’s original work. (Oct.)