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’Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z’: Live Poets’ Society

February 8, 2004
 By LISA ZEIDNER





Pity the poor poet of the early 1980's. Before word
processors, writers going through numerous drafts had to
resort to rubber cement and -- for the really
technologically current -- I.B.M. Selectrics with
correction tapes. But writers lucky enough to have
university appointments could avoid carpal tunnel syndrome
by signing on pert young assistants, who not only eased the
burden of poetry production but served as personal shoppers
and occasional therapists.

Such a helpmate is Annabelle Goldsmith. The eager
undergraduate narrator of Debra Weinstein's deliciously
nasty first novel, ''Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z.,'' is
thrilled to be allowed into the life of her favorite poet.
That the poet turns out to be a coldblooded fraud will not
come as a huge surprise to readers. (No woman is a heroine
to her valet.) Nevertheless, Weinstein has buoyant fun with
the pettiness and pretension of New York's literati. It's
''All About Eve'' for the sonnet set.

Elizabeth Bovardine (a k a Z.) is a tenured professor of
creative writing best known for her searingly original,
vaguely feminist flower poems. It's not long before
Annabelle discovers that Z. is as exacting about everything
in her life as she is about her craft: ''Z. signed all
letters in jet black ink with a gold-nibbed Montblanc
fountain pen. When it came to nibs, there was no comparison
between 14 karat and the other metals, Z. had told me. . .
. I learned how to convert Z.'s handwritten draft into a
perfectly centered and left-justified document, so that
each letter I typed was a miniature work of art.''

Correspondence is hardly the only task for Annabelle. She
must help Z. with her anthology on Emily Dickinson, write
Z.'s class syllabus, sew buttons on Z.'s jacket, shop for
special gifts for Z.'s lover and restock Z.'s mentor, the
powerful but ailing critic Mimi Van Elder, with
prescription cat food. So busy is she protecting the
''psychic space'' of the celebrity poet that she barely has
time for her own therapy appointments, much less her own
writing. ''You're using poetry as a way of avoiding your
feelings again,'' Dr. Sanger scolds her droll, deadpan
patient.

Soon Annabelle is also serving the needs of Z.'s
piercing-obsessed, possibly lesbian daughter, Claire,
herself a poet, and Z.'s handsome husband, Lars, an actor
turned writer. (''The point here . . . is to upstage me,''
Z. complains.) All this interferes with Annabelle's most
sacred job responsibility: researching (and eventually
writing) Z's poems. The flower poet, alas, turns out to
know absolutely nothing about flowers.

Weinstein captures the great poet's majestic self-regard;
Z. is an otherworldly genius with a really good French
manicure. And Weinstein is equally adept at bringing life
to her cast of extras, most notably Annabelle's lover,
Harry Banks, a James Joyce-obsessed fledgling novelist who
likes to playact smutty scenes from Joyce's letters to
Nora, complete with spanking and long silk gloves. Also
nicely captured is an up-and-coming poet named Braun Brown,
whose black leather miniskirts and appearance on the cover
of Vogue particularly rile Z.

''Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z.'' is especially funny
about the cattiness and competition among putatively
feminist poets. Each heiress of Plath and Dickinson insists
on woman as the equal of man -- so long as she's the only
woman in the room. In one of the novel's best scenes, the
female writers at a Boston poetry retreat are promised
bubble baths of sisterly encouragement. But positive
reinforcement is not exactly what Annabelle gets when she
follows Braun's command to tell the truth about the
dysfunctional Bovardine family.

Annabelle's Bovardine-bashing poem is included in the
novel, as are poems by Z. and Claire, along with those of
Annabelle's classmates' and even Annabelle's heavily edited
copies, with suggestions for rewriting. Weinstein, herself
a poet, creates idiosyncratic cadences for each character's
precious products. She has clearly served time in poetry
workshops; her novel captures both the cant and the comical
gravity of the proceedings. As workshop leader, Braun
demands that each poem be read multiple times. Reciting a
student's work, Braun ''sounded like someone you would want
holding your hand, counting backward with you from 25, as
you waited for the anesthesia to take effect.''

As an ''apprentice in life and in art,'' Annabelle comes to
know just how shallow the writers she worships really are.
Z. runs a famous poetry salon attended by some of the
country's most revered writers, and from the snippets
Annabelle is privileged to overhear (usually she's sent out
on crucial errands like acquiring new hand towels for the
bathroom), she's shocked at the low level of discourse: ''I
had expected the conversation to become deep and
meaningful, that they would open their briefcases and take
out their poems, much the way we did in our writing
workshop. Instead they spoke about margaritas and dental
work, and shared strategies for getting out of jury duty.''


How far we have fallen, Annabelle realizes, from the
classic poets, who commemorated their muses with wonderful
works of art. Still, she would rather be Harry's girlfriend
than the girlfriend of Robert Herrick, whom she studies so
that Z. can fake familiarity with his work: ''It was the
age of God and the virgin, and if a poet liked you and you
played hard to get, you could end up naked, forever
immortalized in his poetry. But I wouldn't have wanted to
be Celia or Julia. In the 17th century, there was no
running water, just perfume to cover up bad odors. These
poets were probably very smelly.''

We meet Annabelle in her junior year at the University of
New York City, a fictional campus that just happens to have
a view of Washington Square. Since Weinstein herself is a
graduate of New York University, it's tempting to read
''Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z.'' as a roman a clef. On
the other hand, Weinstein may have just done a creditable
job of inventing a convincing first-person narrator. Her
young Annabelle is an utterly believable combination of
moxie and cluelessness. By the time she realizes that -- in
Lars's words -- ''her mentor'' has become ''her
tormentor,'' readers are ready for her to exact her sneaky
revenge.



Lisa Zeidner is the author of two books of poems and four
novels, most recently ''Layover.'' She is a professor at
Rutgers University in Camden, N.J.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/books/review/08ZEIDNET.html?ex=1077261857&ei=1&en=551c67c88c22fbb3


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